


The Case of the Marie Celeste

by Edhla



Series: After the Fall [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-18 08:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 58,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5917585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edhla/pseuds/Edhla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can't John Watson even take his daughter to the aquarium without stumbling on the mysterious disappearance of a young family? (Spoiler: No.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fiss

**Author's Note:**

> This is #10 in a Series 3 AU series that starts with After the Fall. It's really AU, is what I'm saying. If you want in on the ground floor, After the Fall, on my profile, is the one to start from :)

_**A/N-** This is #10 in a Series 3 AU series that starts with After the Fall.  It's really AU, is what I'm saying. If you want in on the ground floor, After the Fall, on my profile, is the one to start from :)_

* * *

"Fiss, Daddy! FISS!"

John shifted Charlie's weight on his hip and offered up a smile, somewhat pained. "Yeah," he said. "Lots of fish."

If there was anything that could be said about the local aquarium, it was that it definitely had lots of fish. The perfect place to take Charlie on a rain-soaked Sunday afternoon in late November. Charlie had spent the earlier part of the month sick with tonsilitis, on-again-off-again misery which had finally resulted in a hospital stay and a tonsilectomy. Since then she'd apparently made a full recovery, but Molly had become obsessed with the idea that their sixteen-month-old daughter was now regressing with her speech. Charlie liked fish. Seeing fish might encourage her to talk more, and even though John was back at work three days a week, both he and Molly still had weekends free for family outings. This one had so far been a raging success - for Charlie, anyway. She had hoarsely squealed "FISS!" at every fish she'd seen for the past hour and a half.

"Daddy…" She struggled against his grip until she was close enough to the underwater viewing glass to plant both sticky palms on it. "Daddy, look! Fiss!"

John looked over his shoulder at Molly. She was hanging back holding onto the pram, which was stacked with their bags and coats. "I never want to look at another fish again," he muttered to her.

Molly smiled. "So that's a 'no' on getting her a goldfish?"

"I've already said it's a 'no' on the goldfish, Lolly. We have cats. Anyway, she's too young to look after a fish. It'll probably die in two weeks flat, and then we're going to have to explain to her about Fish Heaven."

Before Molly could reply, a large, balding man in a brown bomber jacket breached the gap between them, then elbowed John aside until his nose was almost on the viewing glass. "Kids!" he roared. "Come and have a look at this!"

Two… four… no, _five_ children. As he stepped aside to let them through, John counted his mercies. Behind them was an exhausted-looking, frail, fortyish woman who held about four coats in her arms and who seemed even less enthusiastic about "fiss" than John Watson.

The man banged on the glass with both fists. "Why doesn't it do something?" he said. "Christ above, I paid a hundred and twenty pounds - _a hundred and twenty_ _pounds_ \- to get in here, and that's not including feeding seven of us, right? If I knew it was going to be this boring, I'd have taken the kids to the zoo instead."

"It's a fish," John said. "And it's, y'know, swimming around in its tank. What else did you expect a fish to do?"

The man gave him a filthy look. "Shows what you know, mate," he said. "It's a shark, not a _fish_."

"OK," John muttered. He rolled his eyes at Molly, who smothered a giggle.

The main attraction in this tank was, in fact, a huge Mako shark, nearly three metres long, with sides that gave off a metallic gleam and a snout as sharp as a rapier blade. A sign, adorned with painted barnacles and sea shells, let the visiting public know that the shark's name was Marvin, and that he was a brand-new arrival at the aquarium. While the man in the bomber jacket may have been unfair in his expectation of how entertaining a fish should be, John had also expected a shark to be a little more - animated. Besides the odd restless flick of its tail, it seemed to be drifting through the water, rather than swimming. Glassy eyes - but then, sharks _always_ had glassy eyes. As the sticky, boisterous children crowded in for a better look, the man banged on the glass again, completely ignoring another sign nearby: _Please don't bang on the glass. It frightens me!_

"Looks like we're done looking at the shark," John said to Molly. "And I'm desperate for a coffee. Do you think they sell any here that won't require us taking out a bank loan…?"

Charlie screwed up her nose and demonstrated another word she'd learned during her recent illness. "Daddy," she said quietly. "Fiss _sick_."

John turned back to the tank just in time to see it. The Mako accordioned itself up, as if it were gearing up for a sneeze. Then its head shot forward, three times in quick succession, and a rust-brown cloud erupted from its mouth and billowed into the water around its head. In amongst it, a large, fleshy lump drifted toward the viewing glass. John caught a glimpse of an emblem on it - two boxers in fighting stance. A tattoo.

"Oh, God," he said.

And that was when the screaming started.

* * *

There must have been police in the area already, because a pair of uniformed officers arrived within ten minutes - an impressive response time, even if they'd had the actual victim on-hand bleeding out. Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade and Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan were only a few minutes later. By the time they arrived and made their way to the area the responding officers had taped off, it was to find Molly on her hands and knees on a tarpaulin, examining the lump of flesh - obviously a human arm - and occasionally poking it gingerly with a ballpoint pen. There was a blank notebook open beside the arm, and she was, oddly enough, wearing latex gloves. John, who still had Charlie in his arms, was having an animated conversation with a balding, tanned man in his late fifties, who was so short he barely came up to John's shoulder.

"Family affair this time?" Lestrade said. "How did you get here before I did?"

"We were already here," John said. "You know it's a good day out with your toddler when she gets to watch a shark vomit a human arm."

"Fiss," Charlie explained.

"Bet you've never seen a fish do that before, Charlie." Lestrade reached over to tweak her chin playfully. She hid her face in John's shoulder for a second, then looked back up at him with mischief in her brown eyes.

"Yeah, she's definitely her mother's daughter," John said proudly. "Wasn't the least bit fazed. Might have a future doctor on our hands, who knows?"

Molly glanced up at her husband and smiled.

"Oh. This is Brian Crouch," John said, taking a step back to let the older man come through. "Directing manager of the aquarium."

Lestrade introduced himself to Crouch and shook his hand, firmly but politely. Then he introduced Donovan, who immediately asked, "So where's the shark?"

They looked over at the viewing tank. It looked empty, except for a few guppies and a starfish or two.

"In our hospital tank," Crouch explained. "We needed to isolate it from the other animals straight away."

"So you removed it from a crime scene," Donovan said. "Well done."

Crouch raised one eyebrow. His eyes were a curiously clear, hypernatural grey, as if he were wearing contact lenses. "This isn't a crime scene," he said. "No crime was committed in this aquarium, detective, I can assure you."

"Well, that's what we're here to find out," Lestrade said. "The shark swallowed the arm somewhere. Sergeant Donovan, do you want to go with Mr. Crouch to the hospital tank? I'll be right there with you, once forensics show up and take over."

"Sure," she said. "Let's go look at this shark, shall we…?"

John knew this for the cue it was, and said nothing until both Donovan and Crouch were out of sight and Lestrade had sent the responding officers to find Centre Management and advise that the Aquarium be closed until further notice. Once they were alone, he said, "I called Sherlock, but it went to voicemail."

"Yeah, I just left him, actually," Lestrade said. "Poking around a yacht. Three missing people - a family by the name of Holland. Brett, his wife Sadie and their two-year-old daughter, Maisie. A friend of Brett Holland, Derrick Rice, found the yacht abandoned off the coast of a village called The Mousehole, in Cornwall."

"You're thinking they were murdered?"

"We don't know yet, but it's looking likely. Going missing isn't a crime, but a whole family, including a toddler?" He shook his head. "There's no other reason for them to completely disappear, anyway. According to Rice and the Cornwall Area Command, it's like this family was just beamed up into the sky. When there was no radio response Rice found the yacht, couldn't get a visual, and boarded. All the Holland's stuff was still there, including their clothes, Sadie Holland's epilepsy medication, and all the navigational equipment. There was a live canary in a cage in the cabin. And get this: there was food laid out on plates in the galley. And when the first responders got there, it was still _lukewarm_."

John thought about this. "Abandoned the yacht in a hurry," he mused. "They must have thought it was going to sink-"

"Which is where Sherlock comes in. The Cornwall force said the yacht - the _Marie_ _Celeste_ \- is perfectly seaworthy, not a thing wrong with it, full radio access, it was barely a mile off-shore, and neither the life jackets nor the inflatable life raft had been touched - if they abandoned ship, why didn't they take the raft?"

"... Pirates?"

"No blood, no signs of a struggle."

"So they just sort of… disappeared?" John looked down at the rubbery lump of flesh, with the two boxers still facing off on it. "I think I'm getting this," he said.

"Yep." Greg gestured to it with one finger. "That tattoo. Apparently, Brett Holland had a tattoo of two boxers fighting on his right bicep. We'll need to run a DNA check, and fingerprints, if they can be lifted, but I'd say that's him. Or at least, part of him. Eaten by a shark."

"Cornwall? In November?"

He shrugged. "I'm told it's not impossible. Climate change, and all that."

"Well, I'm not an expert either," John said. "But it seems a bit… odd to me."

"Either that, or someone broke into a secure aquarium to feed the shark, when they could've just tied a brick to the body and dumped it into the Thames."

"Or buried it somewhere." John glanced over at Molly again, still diligently writing notes. "So Sherlock's having a look at the _Marie_ _Celeste_ now. What does he think?"

"What does he ever think?" Lestrade said. "I did hear him muttering something about the canary, but if I understood what he was talking about, I wouldn't need him, would I?"

John pulled out his phone and poked at the display screen with his thumb. "Three texts," he said. "Two missed calls. I'd better call him back, Greg, let him know what's happened. See if he wants us to text him photos of the arm, or whatever."

Taking Charlie with him, he wandered a few metres away to the perameter of the police tape and put the phone to his ear. As Lestrade turned back to Molly, crouched awkwardly on the tarpaulin, he heard John open the conversation with, "Well, it finally happened, Sherlock. Two tens going on in two different locations…"

Lestrade got down on one knee beside Molly. "How'd you convince Crouch to let you have a poke around like this?" he asked her.

She smiled, picking up the notebook and resting it against her knee while she scribbled something in it. "My hospital ID," she said. "It was in my handbag. Um… I don't mean to be difficult, but I don't think the victim was eaten by a shark, Greg."

"But John said you saw the shark puke that up. How could he not have been?"

"Oh, I meant, I don't think that's what killed him." With her pen, she pointed to the severed end of the arm. "The shark looked far too small to have swallowed a whole person, which gave me an idea. I'd need to see the flesh under microscope to be able to say for sure, but this wound isn't consistent with a bite. Teeth make a ragged mark on the flesh. This is far too neat for that. And teeth splinter bone, but that one's cut cleanly through. And look at this, here…" She pointed to a spot on the purple, rubbery flesh.

"That's… oh, bugger," Lestrade said. "That's what it looks like, isn't it?"

Molly nodded. "Rope burn."

Lestrade leaned back on his heels, thinking. "So he was tied up and his arm cut off," he said. "Don't tell me he was alive when they did it."

"I can't tell just by looking at it here," Molly said. "But maybe. Corpses don't get rope burn like that. Greg… if Brett Holland is dead, what happened to his wife and daughter?"


	2. Chapter 2

The _Marie Celeste_ had been brought in to dock, but it didn't mean it was at rest. Sheets of rain had been blowing across London for two days, sending shivering ripples from the southern banks of the Thames. Below deck, Sherlock Holmes was prowling around the saloon area and adjacent galley, magnifying slide in hand. Detective Constable Jacob Dyer was leaning against the companionway ladder, watching him but making no ill-advised attempts to interfere with the great detective while he was working.

"Yes, I'll imagine she'll get used to the idea eventually," Sherlock said over his shoulder, breaking the silence.

Dyer raised one eyebrow. "Sorry, what?"

"Your mother. She'll get used to the idea of her eldest son living in sin with his girlfriend eventually."

"Who told you that?"

"Your shirt told me that." Sherlock pointed to it. "Horizontal ironing creases, for the first time. Your mother generally irons your work shirts for you, and the creases in her ironing are vertical, sometimes with a slight left bias that indicates she's left handed. You haven't lived at home in at least three years, so your moving out won't have done it. The fact that your mother's still doing your ironing for you years after moving out tells me you're still very much tied to the apron string, despite your age and profession. You've told her Hayley's moving in with you. The creases are very similar to those in Lestrade's shirts before his divorce. He now alternates between having his work clothes professionally laundered and ironed, and getting Melissa to do it. Melissa doesn't iron like that, and no paid professional would ever have left those creases. So someone's ironing for you - not your mother, not yourself, doubtfully Julie and certainly not Melissa. Someone who learned to iron from Julie - and someone who may well know why your mother is upset with you and be feeling guilty over the matter. Hayley. Easy."

"You think I've got to worry about what Greg thinks?"

"No. I think he's come to accept the fact that his daughter is nearly twenty years old and in any case, he's too busy with the wedding to worry about you and Hayley. Though you might want to consider calling him 'sir' and not 'Greg' at work."

Before Dyer could reply, they both heard the distinct sound of John's tread on the deck above, and Dyer moved to one side to let him through as he climbed down the companionway ladder. He hadn't reached the bottom before Sherlock demanded, "Where's Lestrade?"

"Yeah, it's great to see you too," John said.

"I saw you at breakfast this morning," Sherlock said. "And you're not in charge of this investigation. What happened to the arm?"

"I didn't bring it with me in my pocket… calm down, Sherlock, Greg's somewhere up there on his phone, and I got the photographs of the arm for you." John surrendered his mobile phone. "At every possible focal length, angle and lighting."

"I'm sure you've missed a few," Sherlock said absently, swiping through the photographs with his index finger. "But as always, your data-collecting is well above the level of your average police detective, John."

John gave a light sigh. After all, that passed for "thank you" with Sherlock Holmes, who now handed the mobile phone to Dyer.

"What do you make of that?"

Dyer shrugged, though he quickly glanced up from the picture. "It's an arm," he said.

"Yes, thank you for that amazing observation," Sherlock said acidly. "I'm not Lestrade, so I don't care how brave you are looking at pictures of disembodied limbs. What does the arm tell you about the victim?"

"It's Brett Holland," Dyer said immediately. "Lestrade said he had a blue-and-red tattoo of two boxers on his right bicep…"

"So you've positively identified an entire person based only on a tattoo that could have been replicated in a thousand tattoo parlours. Will that hold up in court?"

"Since when do you care if it holds up in court?" Dyer flashed back. "And no, it probably won't. A match on mitochondrial DNA will, though. We've got his mum in up at headquarters giving a mouth swab and blood test right now."

"Good, fine." Sherlock waved his hand absently. "But you've told me the arm belongs to Brett Holland. You haven't told me what you can deduce _about_ Brett Holland."

Dyer looked at him in confused silence, then glanced at John. "I don't understand," he said.

"Oh, of course you don't-"

"Just tell him, Sherlock," John interjected, before this could turn into a squabble.

Sherlock raised one eyebrow.

"Us," John muttered, glancing down at his shoes. "Fine. Tell _us."_

Sherlock waited for both of their attention before stepping back, as if he were on a stage, and beginning. "Brett Holland is in his late thirties," he said. "He's right handed, a keen golfer, and of a nervous disposition. He plays the acoustic guitar, but badly, and he's an accomplished seaman."

"… Calluses?" John guessed. Sherlock had many times tried to show him how much calluses could say about a person, but he'd never been able to pick up the finer nuances of them.

"This photograph, here." Sherlock zoomed in on it with two fingertips. "Calluses between the thumb and index finger from where he habitually holds a golf club. Fingernails are very short. They're bitten, not cut, which indicates a nervous habit. Fine flakes of skin on the tips of the second and third fingers indicate he's an amateur guitarist - those marks are from where the plectrum's slipped off the strings and his fingertips have got in the way. But we know he's an experienced sailor, because-"

"Dyer!" Lestrade called from somewhere up on the nearby wharf.

Dyer lifted his head slightly, in a way that reminded Sherlock of a spaniel. "Sir?"

"Don't 'sir' me, just come out here when I'm trying to talk to you."

"Uh, yeah, coming, sir." With an exasperated glance at Sherlock, Dyer climbed up the companionway ladder. Both Sherlock and John heard his footsteps across the deck, then a slight shudder that indicated he'd disembarked.

"I thought _I_ was the idiot," John said after a few moments of silence. "New protegee, then?"

"Call it insurance." Sherlock had busied himself with his magnifying glass again. "Lestrade will retire eventually. I don't want him leaving his job to someone stupid."

"Pretty sure Donovan will be going for Greg's job when he retires," John said. "Anyway, I wouldn't worry about him retiring. DCI Chambers just put in for _his_ retirement."

Sherlock looked up sharply. "How do you know?"

"Melissa told me - she was over yesterday, something about the hen night."

Sherlock looked stricken for a second. "And if Melissa knows about it," he reasoned, "it's because Lestrade told her. And if he bothered to tell her about it -"

"He's thinking of going for DCI," John finished. "He might not be thinking very seriously about it, though. It's a lot more paperwork, for a start. Still, you never know…" He trailed off as they both heard heavy footsteps on the deck, and then Dyer descended back into view, followed closely by Lestrade.

"Right," Lestrade said. "Forensics will be here in about three minutes. What have you got, Sherlock?"

"Absolutely nothing."

Stunned silence.

"Not the time to be a smart-arse, Sherlock," John finally said.

"I'm not," Sherlock said. He sounded slightly injured, as if it were unfair to suggest he would ever stoop to being a smart-arse in the middle of a case. "I've been over every inch of this boat twice. Oh, do you mean you want to know about the Hollands? I've just been explaining Brett Holland's predilections to Dyer. Sadie Holland is a size ten, in her mid-thirties, has shoulder-length dyed red hair, and is an experienced, fit sailor."

"Go on." John smiled. "How did you know?"

"It's obvious, isn't it? Sadie's clothes are in the hamper over there. Size ten, with bright red dyed hairs clinging to them. Shoulder length. Judging from the style of clothing, she's either slightly conservative or in her mid-thirties. Since she's married to a man in his late thirties, with at least one very visible tattoo, it's more likely the latter."

"And what about her being an experienced sailor?"

"This yacht is brand new, very luxurious, and would have cost the Hollands a fortune. Nobody with any common sense spends that sort of money on a yacht unless they're into sailing as a serious hobby and know what they're doing."

"Well, Brett Holland, maybe, but why Sadie?"

"Oh, for God's sake - _open your eyes_ and take a look at the size of this thing. For two people to be able to sail a sixty-foot yacht while keeping an eye on their two-year-old, both of them would have to have a lot of experience and competency. It's an unscientific piece of stereotyping that women can't drive, whether that be cars or boats. Sadie and the daughter were both on board. Sadie suffers from epilepsy severe enough that she needs daily medication, and Maisie is two years old - no doubt very active and doesn't listen well to instructions."

John neatly converted a snigger to a cough. Over the past three months, poor Sherlock had had plenty of experience living with a one-year-old who was very active and certainly didn't listen well to instructions. Charlie had just then invented a charming new game where she confiscated any little objects that weren't bolted down and "put them away". Her parents were used to keeping things out of her grasp, but so far she'd helpfully put Sherlock's keys away in the toilet and his wallet in the dishwasher. It was now slightly mangled, but very clean.

Sherlock gave him a frosty glance. "There's no way either she or her mother would even be on board except in the full confidence that Sadie could manage things in an emergency," he continued. "Inference: Sadie Holland is an experienced sailor. John, any chance Brett could have had his arm cut off and still be alive?"

John thought for a second, then shook his head. "Not unless the wound was cauterized immediately and he was in the care of a doctor," he said. "Otherwise he'd go into shock, if the blood loss didn't kill him first. But anyway, we can safely assume he's dead, 'cause Molly seems to think the arm was cut off after Holland's heart had stopped."

"She'd swear to that?"

"She's a pathologist," John reminded him. "They hardly ever swear to anything. 'Is consistent with' is their favourite expression."

"Yeah," Lestrade said drily. "All right, we assume Brett is dead. Assuming Sadie is _alive_ , is she in danger without her epilepsy medication?"

"Hard to say," was John's infuriating answer. "There's as many different types of epilepsy as there are epileptics. Depending on the dosage and what triggers a seizure, she could go for days feeling fine, or go into convulsive status pretty much right away."

"Convulsive status?"

"Short story: bad news. Without emergency intervention, the best we can expect is permanent brain damage." John paused. "Find her doctor and talk to them about it. Without ever having seen her, I really can't tell you much more."

They stood in grim silence for a few seconds, listening to the creaks and cracks of the fibreglass hull. Finally, from above, they heard a door slam and distant voices, one of which they all recognised as belonging to Gifford, one of the forensic technicians. Lestrade cleared his throat.

"Forensics are here," he said unnecessarily. "So you've got about thirty seconds. But you said you had absolutely nothing…?"

"Absolutely nothing on how the Hollands and their daughter left this boat," Sherlock said. "There are no signs of force or violence anywhere. No bloodstains, no shreds of fibre or fingernails, no damage to the deck or hull. No evidence they put up any kind of protest at being removed from the yacht."

"So they went voluntarily?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Almost certainly not," he said. "For one, the life raft hasn't been tampered with. It's possible the Hollands would have left the canary to starve to death, though nothing here indicates they're the sort of people who neglect animals. It's also just possible that they would have left without their clothes and effects. But Sadie Holland would never have left her epilepsy medication behind if she had a choice." He looked down at the bowls on the table, heaped with sticky clumps of stone-cold rice, reeking strongly of coriander and lime. He poked the rice in one bowl with his finger. "There's something not right here," he said.

"What, you mean _apart_ from three people being missing?" Greg said, glancing at his watch. "Well, anyway, that's us done here. Derrick Rice is back at headquarters for questioning. Can we get off this boat now?"


	3. Colours and Schemes

Derrick Rice had clearly had an interesting life, if his face went for anything. Pale blue eyes peered out from under a heavy brow. His skin was the colour of treacle and as tough as old boots, aging him well beyond his real age, which he'd given as thirty-eight. His hair, which stuck out in different directions from a double-crown, was a curious ginger that bordered on yellow. Despite it, he'd clearly been attractive when younger.

Sherlock Holmes was not, however, busy evaluating whether the man sitting opposite them at the interview table was handsome or not. He'd already noticed that he was some sort of manual labourer - carpentry, if his observations of his heavily-tanned skin and the scars on his knuckles were correct. Never married - no ring and no tanline indicating he'd ever worn one. Nicotine stains on the fingers of both hands indicated that Rice smoked heavily and indiscriminately. He was not Cornish, hailing from somewhere south of the Thames, if his accent was anything to go by. He was a heavy coffee drinker. The stains on his teeth could have been nicotine and not caffeine - hard to tell during brief glimpses when he spoke - but the fact that he'd responded to an offer of a glass of water with the request for a coffee was a dead giveaway, as was the fact that he'd gulped down half of it before Lestrade, who also drank a lot of coffee on the job, could even begin his.

"Before we start talking about what you found yesterday when you boarded the yacht," Lestrade said, "I need to tell you that we now have reason to believe that Brett Holland is deceased."

Rice's eyes widened for a moment, ever so slightly. "How can you know that?" he asked, voice as taut as a piano string. "I don't know anything about that! Have you found him? Have-"

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss details as yet," Lestrade said, shuffling his paperwork. "But we'll get to that at a later stage."

Beside him, Sherlock stifled a grin. He'd always found Lestrade's 'work voice' funny, with its 'as yets' and 'perpetrators' and 'assisting with our enquiries.'

"Right now," Lestrade went on, "we need you to give us any information you can about Brett and Sadie and Maisie. Everything helps, even if it-"

"Jesus Christ, Beryl must be about out of her mind," Derrick said, interrupting Lestrade's usual _even-if-it-doesn't-seem-important-to-you_ speech _._ Then, catching John's questioning look: "His mum."

"Ah." John made a vague scribble on his notepad. "You sound like you know the family pretty well, then?"

"Yeah. Known Brett since I was about eight. We grew up across the street from each other, yeah."

"But you're a Londoner," Sherlock interjected, "judging by your accent. How long have you lived in Cornwall?"

"Two weeks."

"Two _weeks_?"

"Just recently, yeah. But Brett and Sadie moved down there when Sadie was pregnant with Maisie. Brett really got into sailing after Maisie was born, convinced me to give it a go. We used to go out nearly every weekend - it was part of why I moved down here. Got sick of travelling down every weekend."

"So you were sailing in your own yacht when you discovered the _Marie Celeste_ abandoned," Lestrade said.

"Yeah." Rice's mouth twisted sardonically for a second. "Not that I could afford something like that. Mine's the _Lady Marlborough._ She's one step above a dinghy. I moor her at the cove."

Neither Lestrade, Sherlock nor John were particularly interested in how luxurious the _Lady Marlborough_ was, nor where she was moored. "Derrick," Lestrade said. "When did you first try to make radio contact with the _Marie Celeste_ on Friday morning?"

Rice considered. "Twenty past eight," he finally said. "Maybe half past."

"What about twenty to nine?" John tried him. But he shook his head, unwilling to take the bait.

"No," he said. "Wouldn't have been that late. Between twenty and half past eight."

"What did you contact them for?"

"Honestly? To say hi. We do that. Mariners all do that. We're like truckers - it can get boring out there on your own. Half of our radio airwaves are just us saying hi to each other."

"But the Hollands didn't reply," Lestrade said, ignoring the eye-roll Sherlock treated him to whenever he stated the obvious during an interview. "Did you take the _Lady Marlborough_ to find them straight away, then?"

"No," Rice conceded. "I didn't think anything was necessarily wrong. They had Maisie with them. They could have been doing something with her. But I tried a couple more times, still no answer. I got a bit worried and went to find them."

"How long did that take?" John asked.

"Not long," was the evasive reply. "They weren't far away - I knew they were like to be at the north end of the cove."

'Not long' was vague in the extreme, but it didn't really matter. It was a matter of police record that the Cornwall force had first been called from the radio of the Marie Celeste at exactly twenty-eight minutes past nine.

* * *

If anyone looked guilty, Brian Crouch did, and Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan saw it instantly. She sent him alone to the back room containing the hospital tank, leaving him there to sweat for fifteen minutes while she chatted with Molly and with Philip Anderson, who had just arrived to make his own evaluation of the arm and send it back for proper examination. A dangerous tactic, leaving a possible suspect alone when there was no CCTV around. Guilty parties had a nasty tendency towards destroying key evidence, and even sometimes offed themselves before they could confess. But she needed him to talk, and for that, she needed him to be ever-so-slightly rattled. Fifteen minutes to anticipate the interview would be enough to do it.

The annoying thing was, she thought, Crouch was one of those people who experienced soul-crushing guilt over stepping on snails. It didn't matter how guilty he looked. It didn't even matter if he confessed. She still had to mount a case as to how in God's name Marvin the Shark had eaten Brett Holland's arm. More immediately, she had to lodge a case on _when_ this had happened, and the official timeline of the case wasn't leaving her much margin for error. Brett Holland's last radio transmission had been recorded at 7:28am, the morning before last, a Friday. Derrick Rice had found the yacht abandoned at around nine that morning. The Cornish force had been done with their initial forensic investigation of onboard by midnight on Saturday and had had the Marie Celeste moved in one piece up to the Thames shipping yard where Sherlock Holmes had been examining it an hour before, two p.m. on Sunday, when Marvin had suddenly become the most interesting shark in existence.

"He's not doing too well," Crouch muttered, staring at the shark, which looked like nothing more than a wobbly grey lump from Donovan's view above the tank.

"I'm not surprised," she said. "Is he going to die, do you think?"

"I hope not."

Donovan decided not to tell Crouch that phone calls were flying all over the place as the Metropolitan Police sought advice on whether it was necessary, or even legal, that Marvin be euthanised and dissected for further evidence. "Noticed there's CCTV cameras all over the place," she said instead, grabbing a nearby chair and sitting down uninvited. She smoothed out her skirt and tweaked at her pantyhose for a second. "I suppose you'll let us have a look at those?"

"Yes," Crouch said, though it was through clenched teeth. "I don't know what you expect to find, though. This place is secure. Absolutely nobody could ever have got in here and fed a human arm to a shark."

"That's interesting." Donovan tucked one tendril of hair back into the tortoiseshell comb that kept it off her face, hoping she wouldn't have to resort to any more tics in her arsenal - examining her nails, splaying her toes. "Because about twelve people saw the shark puke one up, and I reckon it's also probably on CCTV. So it had to have eaten it somewhere - whether here or wherever it was before you put it on display here. Where did you get it from?"

Crouch hesitated.

"I'm going to find out if you're lying," she said. "Save me some time. I'm in the homicide squad, not the animal ethics group."

"It was caught in waters just off Lamorna Cove," he said wretchedly. "That's in Cornwall."

"Yeah, I figured that last bit out all on my own. When did this happen?"

"About midday, the day before yesterday."

Donovan raised one eyebrow. "God, you didn't waste time putting it on display," she said. "Why's that?"

"Where else did you suppose we'd put it?"

"Quarantine?"

"From what? There's no other sharks or any larger fish in that tank." He sighed. "Constable -"

"It's Sergeant, actually."

"Sergeant Donovan," he corrected himself. "The aquarium has to present itself as some sort of sea-life sanctuary so that people will still come here and see the animals. The reality of it is that we're a _business_ and we're here to make money. Checked the weather forecast? It's set to rain for another week, which means we get most of the zoo's overflow of customers, especially from overseas visitors. We're used to culling smaller fish and marine animals from the wild, but the shark was an incredible bonus, and we didn't want to lose visitor money while it swam around in a quarantine tank out here. You generally don't get sharks like that in English waters, and you definitely don't get them this late in the year."

"Well," she said. "Apparently, you do. Unless you're lying to me."

"I'm _not."_

Donovan pretended to write notes in her folder at a rate of knots. "So," she said, after an agonisingly long silence. "When did you first notice there was something wrong with the shark?"

"With Marvin?"

She looked back at him stonily. "With the shark," she said. The hell was she calling a wild animal netted and dumped in an aquarium by some dopey name like 'Marvin'.

"Hard to say," he said. "When you bring an animal of that size and complexity in from the wild, it can… take a while for it to adjust. So we expect the sharks to behave a bit odd for a few days - maybe even a few weeks. Neurotic. They bump their heads against the glass, swim in circles…"

"Puke human arms," she chimed in innocently, still pretending to write in her folder. "Sounds like you poach for the aquarium a fair bit, Mr. Crouch. I mean, since you know how sharks behave when you yank them out of the ocean and stick them in a tank. What else are you keeping here that should be out swimming in the middle of the Atlantic?"

His eyes narrowed. "I thought you weren't worried about animal rights," he said.

"Never said that," she said. "I said I wasn't going to _prosecute_ you for that sort of thing. Someone else might, but." She stood up. "If that's all you can tell us, I think I might just take your CCTV tapes and go," she said. "Don't leave London. You'll hear from us soon."

He grudgingly handed over the tapes; she thanked him, just as grudgingly. She turned and, reaching out for the door handle, distinctly heard him mutter, "Bitch."

 _Twat._ But there wasn't a lot she could do about him now - there were far more pressing issues to hand. She stalked out to where Molly was politely waiting for her, rocking Charlie to and fro in her pram, though Charlie was wide awake and sucking on a toy giraffe. Molly held a notebook, and passed it across the top of the pram to her.

"Um," she said. "I made some notes. They might not be very good - I don't usually do this outside the lab, but I thought, it's evidence, and the later it's left…"

"Yep. Thanks." Donovan took the notebook, flicking idly through a few scribbled pages. "Find anything interesting?"

"I think so. I was telling Greg. The arm was cut off, not bitten off. And there was rope burn on it." She paused. "But Sadie and Maisie might still be alive," she said. "Maybe they're being held somewhere and can be rescued...?"

"Maybe. We might get them back alive. I'd like to think so," Donovan said, leaving off the punchline: _But I don't think so_. "Can you sit down or something?" she said instead, glancing Molly up and down as she read through her notes. "You're making me nervous. Copper's reflex. Did John seriously just bugger off with Sherlock and leave you here with the baby?"

"Not really," Molly said, flushing. "I mean, he didn't leave for no reason. He had to go help Sherlock." She decided not to bother telling Donovan that two days a week, _she_ 'buggered off' and left Charlie in the care of her father, nor that the last thing she wanted was John hovering over her anxiously for what was already shaping up to be an incredibly tedious three months.

"Yeah, well, if Rahul ever does something like that, he'll be hearing about it." Donovan pocketed the notebook. "I'll file these with the rest of the case notes, Molly. Thanks for that."

* * *

The aquarium was now closed and Charlie was due for her afternoon nap, so Molly took her 'home' - or back to Baker Street, which had been home for the past three months. She and John had taken up residence in Mrs Hudson's old flat, since the third flat was a 'work in progress', and had been since well before even Sherlock had ever moved in. She and John had recently made progress there, though, with plans to replace the floors and repair and paint the walls. They were currently sleeping in what had once been Mrs Hudson's spare bedroom, a room so small they had to practically climb over their bed to get into it. They'd made the master bedroom into Charlie's nursery. Neither really believed their own excuse that it was because it had already been painted a shade of pink that John found intolerable.

Molly put Charlie in her cradle and settled her, slightly absently. She was on the sofa, theoretically taking it easy and in actual fact ruminating on some photographs of the arm she'd taken with her phone when she heard the street door open and Sherlock and John step into the passage outside.

"And you didn't find any clues," John was saying to Sherlock as they came in. "What's it like, feeling just as stupid as everyone else?"

Sherlock, busy removing his scarf and coat, ignored this last remark. "Once again, you weren't listening, John, and you certainly weren't observing." He draped them over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and, without troubling to even greet Molly, opened the fridge door. "I found one very important clue."

John glanced at Molly. "But you just said-"

"I said I found nothing. Exactly." Sherlock was still half-submerged in the fridge, and both of them heard him mutter, "Why is there never any proper food in here?" He straightened up, holding a plate of leftover rissoles swathed in cling-film, and started picking at it.

Silence. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"If I board a yacht where three people have either been swept overboard, kidnapped by pirates, or savaged in some configuration of murder and suicide, I expect to find _something_ ," he said. "There was _nothing_ amiss. There is the first, last and only clue you need. You can't clean up after your own suicide. And what kind of pirates clean up after themselves?"

"Yeah, all right, you've made your point," John said. "So who else could have done it?"

"I don't know," Sherlock said slowly, as if he were speaking to Philip Anderson. "That's why it's currently a _mystery_. And as always, you're asking the wrong question. The question is not who else _could_ have done it. It's _why_ would they do it."

With that he flounced out, taking his plate of rissoles with him. As he passed Charlie's nursery door they heard him announce, "Charlotte, your parents are idiots."

John waited until Sherlock's heavy tread left the stairs and they could hear him walking around on the ceiling above. "Yeah," he said to Molly. "I really do think he likes having Charlie around."

She laughed. "She keeps him busy," she said. "The mystery of where Charlie's put his things this time."

"Exactly." He paused. "Look, I know he's been carrying on like that for days, but at least he's got a case now. He's just… you know."

"Worried we're about to move out."

"He misses Mrs Hudson."

"We all do."

"Yeah. But we didn't live with her."

Molly decided not to remind John that, for nearly two years, he did live with Mrs Hudson. With a cough, she changed the subject. "Has he said anything else about…? Sorry, I've forgotten…"

"Christabel," he said. "And not that I know of. See, I just don't get that. Off he goes to Germany, just after we moved in. He's gone for four days, back again, wants to talk all about a boring case he couldn't ordinarily be bothered leaving the flat for, and not a word about his sister."

"Did he see her while he was over there?"

"I have no idea. He won't even say that."

She fell silent, looking around her at nothing in particular. "Oh," she suddenly said, more businesslike, pulling her phone out of her jacket pocket and fumbling with the buttons with her thumbs. "Look, I found a double pushchair on sale," she said, passing her phone over so that he could see the sales-floor photograph she'd taken. "You can adjust it five different ways and take the capsules out if you need to carry them. What do you think?"

John decided not to remark on the price. "Yeah, good," he said as enthusiastically as possible, handing the phone back. "We'll go get it on Thursday then?"

She nodded.

"Did we decide whether we wanted to start painting, or… wait til we're in our own place…? I mean, now we know what colour scheme we're after… oh, no." He chuckled and shook his head. "You've been dying to say it for two days, but don't. Don't you dare say you're sorry."

"Well," she said. "Not the sort of sorry where it's my fault. Just sorry that you're disappointed."

His eyebrows shot up. "Who said I'm disappointed?"

"I don't know," she backtracked meekly. "I just… I know you wanted boys."

"Yeah, well, I wanted Charlie to be a boy," he said. "She was two seconds old when I got over that."

Molly frowned. "You never told me that," she said.

He smiled. "That's because I'm not stupid," he said. "Nothing we could do to change anything, and like I said. Two seconds." He gave her shoulder a playful slap. "Anyway, it's up to you. If you want to stay, we'll ask Sherlock if we can stay a while longer. If not, we'll go to that open house on Saturday and at least have a look." Then, seeing her questioning look, explained, "The one we were looking at online last night, with the shed we can set up as an office."

"Oh, yes! Ugly carpet, though," she said, trying not to smile.

"Hideous carpet," he agreed. "But we can fix that. Whatever you like, Lolly, but we're sort of running out of time on this one. You've only got a month of work left."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading :) I'm a student this year so don't have as much time for writing, but I hope to keep this going pretty regularly. 
> 
> As always, any feedback would be the greatest.
> 
> I usually base these stories off real cases, and this is no exception. The Marie Celeste (more correctly, Mary Celeste) was an American brigantine found abandoned off the Azores in 1872. There was no sign of any crew, even though she was completely seaworthy, and among the missing were the captain, his wife and their daughter, aged two. None were ever seen again. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was particularly interested in this case.
> 
> In Coogee Baths aquarium, Sydney, in 1935, a 3.5m tiger shark vomited up a human arm in front of horrified spectators. The subsequent case (technically unsolved) involved organised crime, smuggling, fraud, all that kind of 1930s period-piece stuff. I was debating for a long time which to do for the next fic, and then decided to merge them and add my own solution.


	4. On Duty

"All right, everybody, shut up and listen." Lestrade clapped his hands. It was eight o'clock in the evening, and he was standing at the whiteboard in the incident room, trying to corral a crowd of detectives. This was going to be a long night, and possibly a long week. When there was a kidnapping or suspected kidnapping, especially one involving a child, senior detectives were expected to work around the clock. During the kidnapping of Stephen Hassell, Lestrade had been on the clock for sixty-four hours straight.

"Hey." He clapped his hands again. "You in back. Shut up. If I wanted to be a schoolteacher, I'd have made that career choice… are you girls done gossiping? Right, listen."

The room finally fell silent, or close to silent. Lestrade half-turned to the board behind him.

"Just to bring you up to speed," he said, "so far our analysis of the _Marie Celeste_ has turned up bugger-all in terms of forensics. You all know what that means. No cheating on this one. Legwork and good old-fashioned coppering."

There was a subdued round of groans from the back of the room. Lestrade was, for all his open-mindedness, known for being old-school in his approach - or at least, he was whenever Sherlock Holmes was unavailable or too bored to bother with the case at hand.

"Sherlock Holmes, sir?" someone asked.

"Waiting for me and the pathologist down in the morgue, so we can have a proper look at this arm. He's on it. Don't worry what he's doing, just you concentrate on your business here." Lestrade pointed to the whiteboard. "Okay," he said. "At the moment we have two main suspects. Our first is Brian Crouch, Directing Manager of the aquarium, and a dodgy little creep if ever I saw one. But that doesn't mean he's a murderer or he fed a human arm to his shark. We're going through CCTV tapes of the aquarium now, but I also want background checks on Crouch. Find out his work history, who his friends are, any family, all of his hobbies, what colour his duvet is. You get the idea. Anything that could link him with the Hollands." He turned back to the whiteboard. "Our other suspect is Derrick Rice. Brett Holland's best friend - or so he says. A preliminary interview this afternoon didn't bring up much, so we're bringing him back in in the morning. Again, same thing. Background checks. Be thorough. I also want to know everything you can find on Brett and Sadie Holland. If the yacht was pristine, and it was, then this wasn't the work of a random serial killer. Statistically they were killed by someone they know. Find out who they knew who wanted to kill them." He pointed to a long card table at the back of the room. "Caffeine is over that way, but need I remind you not to overdo it? We've got one hell of a task ahead of us. I don't want to send anyone home with caffeine poisoning. Thanks."

He put down his marker and made his way across the incident room to Donovan's office. It was a dark little alcove no bigger than a broom closet, and because of her filing cabinet, the door didn't close all the way. But she had begged him for her own space and not complained about its inadequacy, as it afforded her some semblance of privacy. He stood in the open doorway and knocked.

"Hey," he said. "You missed the briefing, but I guess you know what I said. Anything?"

Donovan leaned back in her chair and rubbed at her eyes blearily. "Nope," she said, gesturing in despair at her laptop screen. "Not a thing. And I've been watching these tapes for four hours now."

"Listen." Lestrade sat on her desk, something he very rarely did. "Had a call from Brian Crouch. Before you get excited, it was only sort of case-related. He wanted to complain about your interview this afternoon." He sighed. "Listen, Donovan. You know why I've got your back? The same reason I've always got Sherlock's back. You're good. You're bloody good. But if you're going for DI-"

"I haven't decided on that yet," she said, prickling.

"Well, _assuming_ you're going for DI," he said. "And there's one position, and you're up against Parnell and, let's say, Eamon Alexander."

She frowned. Eamon Alexander was Hopkins's sergeant, just as Parnell was Gregson's. She had had a sneaking suspicion that Parnell, who was nearly ten years older than her, might go for DI if the chance arose, but this was the first time she'd heard of Alexander putting his hand up for the job.

"Who do you reckon they're going to put through?" Lestrade was saying. "I'm going to say 'not the sergeant that witnesses keep ringing up to complain about.'"

"Yeah, and you know what I think about that-"

"I do, and you're going to tell me again, aren't you."

"Well, sorry, but you've got me on my high horse now," she said. "Not sure about Alexander, but if they're playing a fair game with promotions, I've got a better case record than Parnell. My job is to find things out, not play nicey-nice. Anyway, how's things going for you in that?" she asked, shuffling her paperwork and glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Hmm?"

"I heard you were going for Chambers's job."

"Yeah, well," he muttered. "Not too sure about that, so maybe don't spread it around yet. By rights, I should probably leave that to Merivale."

"May the best man win," Donovan said. "Or in this case, the best woman."

* * *

At a quarter past five in the morning, Sherlock came downstairs in his pyjamas and bare feet and, seeing a few dim lights were on in 221a, tapped on the door with his fingers. A few seconds later, John opened it. He was bleary eyed and still in his pyjamas, but for the most part, he was awake. Down the hall, Sherlock glimpsed that the bathroom door was shut and behind it, the shower was running.

"You're up early," John said, hushed, as he let Sherlock through. "Come in, just keep it down. Someone's decided that between three and five in the morning is playtime, and we've only just got her down again. Kettle's boiled." He nodded toward it.

Sherlock rarely made himself coffee, but did so this time without protest. "Analysis showed-"

"Sherlock, Jesus, _what did I just say?_ _"_

"Oh, for God's sake." Sherlock switched to _sotto voce,_ though he was still making coffee more loudly than necessary. "Analysis showed little to no white-cell migration on the severed end of the arm," he tried again.

"Thank God for that." John exhaled, sitting down at the kitchen table. "So he was dead, then, when it happened. But what about the rope burn?"

"Easy. Restrained at length before he was murdered, and then the arm was cut off. The pathologist's report says that the instrument used to sever the arm was small and blunt, like a hatchet or a tomahawk, and the job was anything but professional."

"So, basically, anyone could have done it."

"Even a woman or a child of twelve, according to Lestrade. He called just now. They've reviewed CCTV footage of the shark tank at the museum from four different angles. There was nothing."

"Damn it," John said. "I suppose it'd be too easy if we got footage of the murderer dumping the arm."

"Far too easy. But it does mean we can narrow the investigation from the aquarium, and to Cornwall and the Holland's relatives and friends in London. Today, the police are interviewing Brett and Sadie's families, friends… and Derrick Rice again. That was wrong, John." Sherlock reached across the little kitchen to the fridge.

"What was?"

"Every single thing Derrick Rice told us yesterday was wrong - wrong in detail, wrong in motive."

"Like what?"

"Like this: He said that Brett and Sadie Holland moved from London to Cornwall while Sadie was pregnant with Maisie."

"Yeah, well, they did." John sipped his coffee. "The police already checked that one out."

"Factually correct, yes, but doesn't that sound _strange_ to you?"

"You've lost me, Sherlock. It's way too early in the morning to play this game."

Sherlock let out a light sigh. "At this point in your life, with Charlie not yet two years old and Molly pregnant, would _you_ pack up everything you had and abruptly move five hours away to a place where you knew nobody? Would _you_ take Molly away from her support network at a time where she was most vulnerable?"

"Wow, you're learning fast," John said. "And no, not unless I had a good reason. Maybe Brett moved to Cornwall for work."

"We know he didn't. He worked at the HSBC branch in Penzance, but he only got that position a month after they moved. Before that, they were living off savings. Would you do that? Relocate to Cornwall to live off savings?"

"I hear it's a nice place."

"It's not nice enough to move there with no financial back-up plan when you've got a baby on the way."

"Yeah, okay, you're right. That is a bit weird. Why didn't you ask Rice _why_ they moved, then?"

"Because he was very unlikely to tell the truth, and I needed him to hurry up and move on to the details of when he found the _Marie Celeste._ Again, almost everything he said during that interview sounded odd to me. Did you hear him? Throwing around words like _necessarily_ one moment, and colloquialisms like _like to be_ the next."

"Yeah, I do that," John protested. "Most people do."

"Yes. _When_ do you do that?"

John considered. "At work," he said. "You know, if I'm trying to be professional-"

"Close – very close – but no. You do it when you're repeating something you've _rehearsed_ , even if you've only rehearsed it in your head. If the worst should happen to one of your patients, you have an arsenal of stock-standard phrases you use to distance yourself from those patients and their families."

"Yeah, well –"

"That wasn't a criticism of your bedside manner. I'm just trying to demonstrate that almost everything that came out of Rice's mouth yesterday had been carefully thought out before he spoke."

"You think he's lying?"

"I don't know. Possibly. But the Hollands have been missing for nearly three days now. It's just as likely he rehearsed what to say because he's had a long time to think it over in his head. That's _not_ what we want. That way lies false memories, John, whether they were deliberately created or not."

"So what do we do?"

"We bring him in for another interview, and this time, we rattle the cage. Just a little."

_"_ _Sherlock."_

"Oh, shut up. You love this part."

* * *

At a quarter past seven that morning, breakfast was served at New Scotland Yard headquarters. During a major investigation the higher command could usually be persuaded to cough up for cereal and toast for investigating officers on indefinite shift. But this was an affair of bacon, eggs, sausage and coffee brought in from a cafe at the end of the street, not from the break room.

"Lavish," Donovan commented, dipping her nose into her cardboard coffee cup.

"Yeah, well, with Chambers on the way out, I figure he'll pick up the bill just this once," Lestrade said. It was a well-known opinion of his that free food made people work harder.

"And if he doesn't?"

"He will - at least, he will until and unless we find Sadie and Maisie."

Over a hundred officers were now scouring the Cornish coast between Mousehole and Lamorna Cove and beyond, interviewing locals and looking not just for bodies, but for anything else that would indicate the disappearance of the Hollands. But Lestrade had his doubts there.

"Have you ever heard of a Detective Inspector George Simcoe, Donovan?"

She considered, then shook her head. "The name's ringing a bell," she said. "But I don't know why."

"Oh, you've seen his name up on the memorial board near the canteen," he said. "September 12, 1971."

"Killed on duty?"

"You could say. When I first came here I looked up everyone on the Memorial Roll, and he was the only one who wasn't shot, stabbed, killed in a car crash… you know. All that." He straightened up. "Actually, he had a heart attack."

"What, at work?"

"About right here where we're standing, apparently. There was a kidnapping case, a twelve-year-old girl called Florrie Cane. Went missing from her home, no witnesses. They initially thought the dad did it, but he was cleared, and the kid's still missing. Of course, she's probably dead." He took a breath. "But when I first came here, I tracked down one of Simcoe's old constables. He said that Simcoe said he wouldn't go home until Florrie Cane was found. And he didn't. Slept under his desk, when he slept at all. His wife used to come in and bring him food and clean clothes. Thirteen days of it, and then he keeled over and died."

"Well," she said after a grim pause. "Should _you_ keel over, I promise to perform CPR until the ambulance gets here. But I don't think I'll have to. Nobody's going to let you work yourself to death, least of all HR. Or Mel. I imagine she'll be pretty upset if you die before the wedding. Don't know about hers, but my bridal shop didn't accept returns."

By this time most of the detectives were milling around the card-table full of food that had been set up, but there was one notable absence - Jacob Dyer. Looking around, Lestrade saw him hunched over at his desk.

_Is he seriously asleep? Already?_

Lestrade had a sneaking feeling that what motivated him to go over and check wasn't a desire to discipline him for being sloppy on the job - it was to wake him up before anyone else could do it. But there was no need. Dyer wasn't asleep; he was poring over a manila file of papers.

"Food's on," Lestrade said. "Better get in there before Castelli goes for seconds."

"Oh. Um, okay. Thanks." Dyer stretched both arms above his head and shrugged a couple of times. "Sir, I've been doing some digging, like you said," he said. "A lot of strange things going on in the Holland family."

Lestrade leaned against the desk and kneaded at his eyes with his fingertips. "Okay," he said patiently. "What kind of strange things?"

"Okay, so Brett's mother is Beryl Holland, sixty-one years old, married to Chris Holland, who I think is sixty-three. Both of them are retired schoolteachers, you know, nothing super out of the ordinary. Brett has a sister named Siobhan, who's married to a bloke named Adrian Frost. Still with me?"

"Yep."

"And Adrian Frost is a crim, sir. Him and one of his brothers. They were writing off a car for insurance and something went wrong, and Ethan Frost was badly burned. I assume they drove the car out somewhere and torched it, but I won't get details until later on in the morning. Anyway, they blamed each other, and Adrian went down. He only did a year, but…"

"But it's a massive jump from a fraud job to kidnapping and murder," Lestrade said. "The sort of person who'd firebomb a car isn't the same sort of person who'd hack an arm off a body and throw it overboard. And anyway, if you're going to do an insurance job on a yacht you wouldn't leave it pristine and the passengers missing, you'd scuttle it. What about Sadie's family?"

"Not a lot going there," he said. "Her maiden name is Monash. Parents are Jackie and Jimmy - and they're currently in Kenya."

"And what are they doing there?"

"They run an orphanage. They're on their way home now."

"Good alibis."

"And nothing to gain, either. It's kids that kill parents - I can't even think of a case where parents killed their adult child," Dyer said.

Lestrade considered. "Well," he said. "I assume that Sadie's next of kin benefit from her death. So if Brett and Maisie were killed as well, wouldn't that be Jackie and Jimmy?"

"No chance." Dyer lunged across his desk and picked up a printed bank statement. "That's the really interesting thing. I bet Rice didn't mention that the Hollands are flat, stony broke. Bank statement." He handed it over. "They had sixteen pounds to their name, sir. And that account's been circling the drain for the past eight or nine months."

"What happened there?"

"Bought the yacht, it seems. Bad financial decision. It's all they've been able to do to make the repayments on it. But here's the really interesting thing, sir. They haven't sent any money to the real estate that manages their cottage in over two months."

Lestrade looked up at him. "They weren't paying their rent."

"Nope." Dyer shook his head. "And I reckon that means one of two things - either their landlord is _really_ forgiving, or they didn't pay their rent 'cause they didn't have to. Got evicted, or did a midnight flit."

"Right. Find out for me."

"I'll call the estate agent as soon as they open, sir."

"Good. Now go eat your breakfast before someone else takes it."


	5. Savings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this series. I know it's been a long journey x

At half-past eight that morning, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson arrived at New Scotland Yard headquarters, where Lestrade was waiting for them. Even John could surmise from Greg's damp hair and the strong smell of soap and mint that he'd been at headquarters all night and that he'd just taken a shower and brushed his teeth in the staff bathroom downstairs.

"Just in time," Lestrade said. "Derrick Rice is here. I'm just waiting on Dyer to hand over the… and here he is." He hailed him across the room with one hand. Dyer, a stuffed manila folder clamped under his arm, hurried across and put it in Lestrade's hands.

"Sir…"

"Dyer. How did you get on with the estate agents?"

"Spoke with the manager of the property just now," he said. "She told me the Hollands were paid up in their rent with no money owing, but that they moved out seven weeks ago."

"To where?"

"Would you believe that they didn't ask them to leave a forwarding address? Just a phone number and banking details."

"I would believe it, actually," Lestrade groaned. "Well, at least _you_ asked. You've been through those transaction records, though. Nothing in them that would indicate their deposit being returned to them?"

Dyer shook his head. "It wasn't," he said. "The woman I spoke to said they cleaned before they left, but there was damage to the floor and walls."

Lestrade looked across at Sherlock, who seemed deep in thought. "Sherlock?"

"No," Sherlock said, taking a deep breath as he emerged from his reverie. "There were signs the Hollands _could_ have been living on the _Marie Celeste_ for the previous two or three nights, but seven weeks? Impossible. I would have seen it."

"Right." Lestrade turned to Dyer. "Get Donovan and Halloran," he said. "You three are going on a road trip. You need to contact Inspector McMannis in Cornwall. Tell him you need a team to search both the Holland's cottage and Derrick Rice's place for any proof that the Hollands were there." He paused. "Get Halloran to call, okay?"

"Why Halloran?"

"Because Donovan will get her back up with him, and McMannis might think you're too young and inexperienced. But this is Donovan's investigation in Cornwall, understand? I know she's difficult, but just run with it. I'm going to be here all day interviewing half the Holland clan."

"Walls," Sherlock said. "Brett and Sadie didn't get their deposit back because of damage to the walls…"

"Yeah, I noticed that, too," Lestrade said. "Damage to the curtains and carpet, okay, but how do you damage the walls and floor? What, take to them with a hammer?"

"Or throw someone into them," John muttered.

"Keep that thought," Lestrade said. "Rice might know more than he's saying about what Brett and Sadie's marriage was like. Otherwise, we won't know until we find Sadie - or at least until Donovan's had a look around their cottage. She's got an eye for things like that."

Dyer was still hovering. "Sir," he said. "I think it might be worth having a look at Chris and Beryl Holland's bank accounts, too."

"Why's that?"

"'Cause they're living with Siobhan and Adrian Frost. They're not old enough to need caring for in their old age, so the only reason I can think of as to why a thirty-year-old woman is going to let her parents move in with her is if they're skint. That's motive."

"Yeah, it is," Lestrade said. "If you're a complete psychopath. I'll apply for a warrant; gimme a couple of hours."

* * *

Over the years that they had worked together, John had seen more than few bizarre "interviews" conducted by Sherlock Holmes. But there was always room for being surprised.

Derrick Rice was again waiting for them in the familiar false-cheer of Interview Room One, with its bright painted walls and sofas festooned with throw cushions. He was sitting at the table, his appointed solicitor, a singularly humourless suit named Tom Jeffries, beside him. Before Lestrade had any time to start recording the interview or go through any of the preliminaries, Sherlock snatched his dossier and slammed it hard into the table, very close to Rice's hands.

"We know you murdered the Hollands," he said. "We have proof, so stop wasting my time and just tell us where you put Sadie and Maisie. Did you throw them overboard?"

"Don't say anything," Tom broke in, but Rice ignored him. A tremor had just passed across his face, and he kept his gaze on Sherlock.

"Fuck you," he said.

"Sherlock-" John broke in quietly.

"Did you cut Sadie's arms off when you dumped _her_ body in the ocean?"

" _Fuck you!"_

"Do that to her too, did you?"

"Sherlock-"

Rice shot his chair out. Tom grabbed for his arm and Sherlock drew back, expecting a punch at the least. But Rice twisted free of Tom's grip and slithered onto the floor, getting down on both knees and pressing his forehead to the linoleum. He was breathing heavily. "Get him out," he moaned. "Get him out of here before I kill him!"

* * *

"Great job, as always," Lestrade said, once he'd officially terminated the interview that had never been officially started. He, Sherlock and John had just reached his office, and he shut the door behind them. "Just what the hell is wrong with you?"

"Rattling his cage, right? Yeah, good," John said. "You certainly did that."

Sherlock yanked his scarf off. The heating in the office had been turned up to sub-tropical levels. "You just saw Derrick Rice crawl into a ball on the interview room floor," he said, "and you want to know what's wrong with _me?"_

"Yeah, all right, he threatened to kill you in front of witnesses, so we can't say much about his self control," Lestrade admitted, dropping wearily into his chair and rubbing his brow with two fingers. "But that doesn't mean much - if you accused me of rape and murder, I might threaten to kill you, too. Doesn't mean I did it."

"Rice knows he's a suspect," Sherlock said. "He's had days to anticipate what we might say and prepare for what we might do. Surely the idea that we might accuse him of kidnapping or killing the Hollands has crossed his mind before now. But _that_ blindsided him. I don't think he could have faked that reaction."

"You do know exactly none of that is admissible in court, right?"

"That doesn't matter," Sherlock said. "Interview-room circumstantial evidence is weak even at its strongest, but it lets me know when I'm headed in the right direction."

"The right direction about what?" John asked. "Like Greg said, losing his temper with you in an off-the-record interview isn't-"

"Not losing his temper with me. Losing his temper _about Sadie,_ John." Sherlock turned to Lestrade. "Make sure a forensic team go into Rice's house before anyone else touches it," he said. "I'm sure we're going to find quite a lot of Sadie Holland's DNA in there."

"Christ." Lestrade covered his face with his hands. "Would it be too much to hope that we find it on his bedsheets, not splashed all over his kitchen walls?"

"Hoping never hurt," John remarked.

"I've found it doesn't really make much difference, though," Lestrade said. "So I'm going to guess that Derrick doesn't want to talk to us anymore, and I really don't want to try him right now. We'll be lucky as it is if Tom doesn't raise a fuss about off-the-record stuff."

Sherlock pulled a face, much as if to say he didn't care about trivialities like official complaints.

"So," John said. "What do we do now?"

"I told the Hollands I'd be around for a chat this morning," Lestrade said. "I have a feeling this will be interesting."

* * *

Adrian and Siobhan Frost lived in a flat on Walton Road, wedged in between a laundromat and a shop that sold hot chicken and pizza. Access to the flat was via a side-gate and a passage so narrow that they had to each turn side-on and scuttle crab-like along the wall until they reached the dingy backyard and the staircase. As they walked up, Sherlock kept his gaze down, searching the stairs for anything that might give a clue as to how the family lived. How worn were the stairs? Were they swept and dusted? You could tell a lot about a woman by whether or not she kept the peripherals of her household clean. You could tell a lot about a man by whether he did any housework at all, and how much.

Regardless of who was or wasn't doing the housework in the Frost-Holland household, one thing was obvious: someone living there smoked, heavily and often. The reek of tobacco, both burning and stale, wafted out from under the closed flat door.

They were greeted on the landing, not, as they'd expected, by Siobhan Frost, but by Beryl Holland. She was a squat little woman, with fluffy white hair that clustered on her head like a nestling's. Her bulging blue eyes indicated, to both the consulting detective and the doctor standing beside him, hyperthyroidism that was either undiagnosed or poorly managed.

Sherlock, though, was more interested in her hands than in irrelevancies like her height and medical conditions, which were, after all, simply genetics. The most telling part of the human body was the hands - they spoke to hobbies, work, class and household economics. Beryl Holland's left hand bore a thick wedding band, surmounted by a modest single-set diamond engagement ring and then, above it, an eternity ring band. The diamonds in it were large, but two of them were missing.

_Modest engagement ring - came from a working class background. Eternity rings are a luxury and usually bought for a significant anniversary or the birth of a child. Their youngest child is thirty and that ring is too old to have been a fortieth-anniversary gift, so it's between ten and fifteen years old. But she hasn't replaced the diamonds that have fallen out of the setting. Something happened to the Hollands in the last few years, and it wasn't just that they retired._

"Mrs Holland," Lestrade was saying, reaching out to shake her hand. "Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade - Metropolitan Police. These are my colleagues, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I'm so sorry for having to invade your space at a time like this."

"Oh, invade away," she said sourly. "Just don't mind the mess. Siobhan's a slob."

Nobody being able to think of any polite rejoinder to this, there was an uncomfortable silence as they trailed in behind Beryl. The flat was certainly a mess - there were empty yoghurt pots and eggshells on the sink and a bowl half full of congealed dog food on the floor near the fridge. The flat also smelled strongly of dog, though none was in evidence. Beyond the kitchen, two half-open French doors led into the sitting room, where they caught a glimpse of an elderly man sitting cross-legged in one of the armchairs, an open paper in his lap and a cigarette dangling from his lips.

"Chris," Beryl snapped at him. "Put that out! This is the police."

"Smoking in your own house isn't illegal yet," Lestrade chided, smiling. But he was rewarded by Beryl's glare. Chris stubbed his cigarette out and held his hand out to be shaken, but he did not get up.

"Siobhan's down at the shops," Beryl said. "You're earlier than you said you'd be, and we're out of milk again."

"And Adrian?" Lestrade asked pleasantly before Beryl could launch into a criticism of Siobhan's milk-buying habits. "Is he home?"

"At work," she said. "Where a man _should_ be on a Monday morning. If you want to speak with Adrian, you'll have to come by after-hours. _My_ husband's here, but I doubt he'll be of much help to you."

Beryl Holland did not, apparently, mince her words.

"Well, let's sit down and talk, anyway." They went to the kitchen table, where both the Hollands sat down without inviting anyone else to. Lestrade and John exchanged an awkward glance before Lestrade pulled his chair out. There were only four chairs, but Sherlock gestured John to the last one. He preferred to remain standing where he could see both the Hollands clearly, as well as see out of the sitting-room windows beyond.

"Now, just to give you an update on the DNA sample you gave us yesterday," Lestrade said carefully, clasping his hands in a businesslike way. "So far our lab results haven't come back in. But based on circumstantial evidence, we do believe that the arm is Brett's, and that he died sometime on Friday morning."

Chris Holland made a choked sound that could have been a cry of pain or a laugh. But Beryl's face barely changed.

"I knew," she said dolefully. "A mother always knows. I was doing the ironing on Friday morning, I remember… suddenly feeling so sad…"

"Yes, I'm sorry," Lestrade said again, obviously anxious to steer Beryl away from any maternal claims to having a Second Sight. "But we have every reason to believe Sadie and Maisie are alive. We're throwing our energy into finding them as soon as possible."

 _No reaction,_ John thought, looking across at Beryl and then at Chris, who was pulling at his yellow-stained moustache. _No reaction about their missing granddaughter?_

"I need to ask you," Lestrade said, "if you know anywhere that Brett and Sadie would have kept any… resources."

"Resources?" Chris frowned.

"Well, we mainly need to know if they had money squirrelled away somewhere that isn't an English bank account, but is there anything else you can think of? Stock? Shares? Any assets they might not have wanted to declare for tax?"

Beryl looked at her husband, who cleared his throat. "Inspector Lestrade," he said with dignity, "just why are you asking us this?"

Occasionally, Greg Lestrade took a risk with his investigations. He took one now.

"Because," he said, "we had a look at Brett and Sadie's bank account. There was only sixteen pounds in it. They haven't had any savings in a while…"

"Sorry," Beryl said, staring. "What did you say? Sixteen pounds?"

Lestrade nodded.

"Well," she blurted out, exchanging a baffled glance with her husband. "Well, what in God's name happened to all the money they got from Sadie's grandmother?"

"Her grandmother?" John echoed, earning himself a stern 'shut up' glance from Sherlock.

"Died just after they got married. I don't remember her name, but she was a rich old lady and left Sadie a lot of money in her will."

"How much money?"

"I always thought it was over a million pounds," Chris broke in before Beryl could. "It was a good _lot_ , I know that much. Sadie was the only grandchild. What on earth happened to it all?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't possibly say," Lestrade said, and Sherlock once again wiped a smirk off his face. _Couldn't possibly say_ was Lestrade's professional term for _no chance in hell am I telling you._

"How long has it been since you've seen Brett and Sadie?" John asked, idly tapping the pen he held onto the table.

Beryl puffed out a breath. "Christmas," she said. "We all went down to spend Christmas in Cornwall with them."

"And you haven't seen them at all since?"

"No. Not in person."

"Mrs. Holland, has there been any unpleasantness between your family and Brett's?" Lestrade asked. "I mean, Cornwall's not the other end of the world. Is the reason you haven't seen them since because you weren't on speaking terms?"

But Beryl stared out the window. "There's Siobhan coming in now," was all she said.

* * *

They waited until the Hollands had left the flat before starting their interview with Siobhan. From where he sat next to the window, John watched the older couple emerge from downstairs and cross the street in the direction of a coffee shop on the other side. In the intervening silence, they listened to Siobhan fussing around in the kitchen. Beryl's comment that Siobhan was a "slob" may have been unkind, but it wasn't incorrect. As she prepared instant coffee for the four of them, she dropped the teaspoon three times. And all three times, she picked it up and continued to use it as if nothing had happened. She was a mousy woman, who looked younger than her thirty years. Her dull hair hung in her shiny red face and she wore a t-shirt that was three sizes too big for her and obviously inherited either from her husband or her father.

"I can't believe they didn't even offer you a cuppa," she muttered. "Sorry. Mum and Dad can be… inhospital."

John gave Sherlock's ankle a gentle kick.

"Thanks," Lestrade muttered as Siobhan handed a hot cup to him, coffee dripping down its sides and onto the carpet between his shoes. She appeared not to notice, and Lestrade ignored the stain on the carpet and took a sip while Siobhan carried the other coffees in and settled herself on the sofa. She rearranged her hands several times, as if unsure whether she could commit to the left being over the right or not.

"Siobhan," Lestrade said. "Has your mother explained to you about what happened at the aquarium yesterday?"

She nodded. "You - you found…"

"I'm sorry. But what we _didn't_ find is any trace of Sadie and Maisie. We've got hundreds of detectives and uniformed officers behind this, both here and in Cornwall, but it's already been three days. We need to work as fast as we can. And telling us the truth, not hiding anything - that's the best thing you can do to help find them." Lestrade sipped his coffee. "When did you last see Brett and Sadie?" he asked. "I mean, actually in person."

Siobhan hesitated.

"Siobhan," John said. "The police have ways of telling whether you've visited your brother recently or not. You might as well save some time and tell the truth."

"Uh, it… it was around two months ago," she said. "I went down to Cornwall to see them. It was Maisie's birthday…"

She waved her fingers noiselessly at her mouth for a few seconds, struggling with her emotions. When she finally swallowed down on her tears, John ventured, "you and Adrian went down there?"

"No; just me." She was looking at her hands again, rubbing her fingers against each other.

"Did Adrian get along with Brett and Sadie?"

"I knew you'd ask that," she said tartly. "Yes, he did. He and Brett in particular got on. It's just that Adrian had a darts tournament on that weekend and couldn't go, that's all, and you can check that, if you like."

"Did Brett or Sadie ever ask you or Adrian about doing an insurance job on the yacht?"

She looked up from her fingernails. "Sorry," she said. "An 'insurance job?'"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, please," Sherlock broke in. "You know perfectly well what we're talking about. Did Brett or Sadie ever ask you and Adrian help him scuttle the _Marie_ _Celeste_ for insurance?"

"No!"

"Because if I wanted advice on how to do it," Lestrade said, "and I knew my brother-in-law had a history of-"

"Oh, I knew," she exclaimed. "I knew it would come out. What, you think that because Adrian made a mistake - one mistake - five years ago, it means he would murder Brett and Sadie and Maisie?"

"Who said he murdered anyone?" Sherlock broke in politely.

"Well _someone_ murdered Brett!" she exclaimed. "And Maisie - Maisie might be out there somewhere and you need to _find her,_ not arse about with a case that Adrian already did his time for. He's paid for that. He's changed!"

"Tell that to Ethan." Lestrade said, provoked into acidity. "I hear he lost an eye, thanks to Adrian."

"Oh, if you only knew what Ethan was like, you'd say it was a pity he didn't lose _both_ of them!"

Siobhan got up, so abruptly that her chair tipped back precariously. She blundered out to the hall, grabbing for one of the door handles like she'd been struck blind. They all watched her slam the door after herself.

Lestrade gave a barely perceptible shrug. There was no point in going after her, though if Donovan had been on hand he might have asked her to go down the hall and knock on the bedroom door a few times. They listened for a few seconds to the thumps and bumps emanating from behind that closed door, interspersed with sniffs. Siobhan was opening and closing drawers.

"If she's even thinking about leaving London…" Lestrade muttered. "I think we're done here," he said in a louder voice. "But we need to talk to Beryl and Chris again. And Adrian, when he's home. Do you think if we came back tonight-"

A _thump_ shook the walls around them.

Sherlock was first on his feet, reaching the bedroom door in seconds. It swung open without much force on his part, and he charged in, Lestrade and John on his heels. John, fighting to make his way past Greg in the bedroom doorway, saw that Siobhan hanging from the light fitting, a coil of pink cloth around her neck. Her face was purple, and flecks of foam bubbled up from her mouth. Sherlock lunged forward and clasped both arms around her knees, trying to hold her up.

"Move over!" Greg pulled the chair under Siobhan's heels over to one side and climbed up, fumbling with the knot around her throat until it came apart in his hands. She fell heavily against Sherlock's shoulder, slung over it fireman-style. Sherlock staggered for a second under the dead weight, then gathered her up in a limp bundle and laid her across the bed, one hand cradling the back of her neck. She left a smear of foam and vomit on the shoulder of his jacket.

"Let me through." John pulled at Greg's shoulder to get past him. Kneeling on the mattress, he leaned in close to the unconscious woman.

"Not breathing," he rapped. "Sherlock, call an ambulance. Greg, give me a hand…"

When the ambulance arrived twelve minutes later, John and Greg were still administering CPR.


	6. Truth or Consequences

 

_Why is this wrong? There's something WRONG here…_

Sherlock sat at Lestrade's desk, waiting patiently for him to return from the incident room, where he was arranging for someone to take over Donovan's duties in her absence. He'd cleared the desk and laid out several A4 photographs of the interior of the _Marie Celeste_ and was looking them over, occasionally swapping their order or examining their finer detail with his slide magnifying glass. John was pacing around near the window, phone at his ear, though Sherlock couldn't quite piece together what was going on by his responses.

"Yes… yes. I understand. Has she been in for… no, I figured you mightn't. The police are going to be there this afternoon to talk to staff… yes. Okay…"

Sherlock switched off and willed himself to concentrate on the images. After all, John had many failings, but he had a good memory and had showed time and again that he could accurately relay data. That was currently his job. His, Sherlock's, was to work out why these photographs were tripping something off in his head.

They were completely ordinary photographs of a completely ordinary yacht cabin. If Siobhan and her parents were "slobs", either it hadn't carried over to Brett or his wife had him well trained. The cabin of the _Marie Celeste_ was neat and tidy, but not suspiciously so. Nothing would suggest that it had been cleaned up after a crime had been committed. Forensics had noted that even under UV light, they could find no significant traces of blood.

Sherlock flicked through the photographs. Navigational equipment still in place. A tiny pink parka draped over the back of one of the chairs. Two bowls of a meal mainly consisting of white rice, lime and coriander - the pitiful attempts of a middle-class couple gone broke to pretend they were still doing all right. The canary was flourishing, well-fed and cared for, and was currently happily singing away in its cage on top of the filing cabinet just across the office. John had one finger in his ear to hear the hospital contact officer over the shrill tweeting. Finally, he thanked the caller, hung up, and drew a breath.

"Still unconscious," he said. "But she's hanging on for the moment, and they've got signs of neuro function, so she might pull through. Strangling's one of those things - you can recover completely in days, or you can die."

After waiting a decent length of time for Sherlock to reply and receiving nothing, John continued, "I'm surprised Greg wants a watch on her room. I mean, she attempted suicide. This wasn't a murder attempt. Do you think he's worried about someone hurting her? Adrian? Or maybe her parents?"

Sherlock shrugged, keeping his gaze on the photographs in front of him. He heard, rather than saw, John sighing heavily and then sitting down in the chair across the desk, as if he were being interviewed.

"Listen, Sherlock," he said. "I told you to call the ambulance because there wasn't time to ask you if you knew CPR and show you what to do if you didn't. I knew Greg was trained, because of his job."

Sherlock picked up one of the photographs - clothes, mainly belonging to Sadie Holland, balled up in a bundle at the bottom of a laundry hamper.

"It wasn't that I-"

"Beryl Holland is the key to all of this," Sherlock said. "Not Adrian."

"Seriously? But-"

"Siobhan's instinct was to defend her husband. Did you hear what she said? She feels as if Adrian hasn't an ally in the world except herself, and she knows he's suspected of foul play because of his prior conviction. How can she defend Adrian if she's dead?"

John considered this. "Okay," he said. "But she _did_ try to hang herself, so why?"

"She's afraid of something else - so afraid that it overrode that desire to protect her husband. Fear would induce a person to attempt suicide like that - _not_ anger. Anger is the only emotion Siobhan showed when we started to accuse Adrian." He picked up another photograph - the canary cage _in situ_ \- and glanced at the noisy creature itself, hopping from one perch to another.

"So you think she's afraid of her mother?"

"She's allowing her parents to live at her house."

"When they talk about her like that." John nodded. "Yeah, good point. What's all that about, do you think? Brett and Sadie are broke, and now you're thinking Chris and Beryl are?"

Sherlock nodded. "I've told Lestrade that their bank accounts bear careful scrutiny. Both of them retired in the past three years. Presumably, they were solvent before that time. Before something happened."

"What?"

Sherlock gave him a withering look by way of reply. "Another thing I noticed," he said. "Beryl genuinely did not know that Brett and Sadie had no money. Did you see her reaction when Lestrade told her?"

John nodded. "But come on," he said. "Even if you're broke, you don't murder your granddaughter to collect your son's money. You do what normal people do and ask him for a loan."

"And you'd classify this family as 'normal', would you?"

"Good point." A gust of wind rattled the windows, splattering icy rain onto the panes. John got up and went back to the window, looking out on what was quickly building into a London deluge. After a second he instinctively drew his jacket around himself, as if he could feel it. "God, I wish this rain would just go away."

"So would the Cornwall team. Rain ruins evidence."

"But we'll still have the Holland's place, and Derrick Rice's?"

"I doubt Sadie and her child are at either place. If they were, we'd know."

John looked out at the rain again. "It's cold out there," he muttered.

"Worrying about the cold won't help find Sadie and Maisie any faster," Sherlock said briskly. "And if they're dead, this weather won't be bothering them at all."

John whirled around to face him. _"Jesus_ , Sherlock, what-"

"Just being practical."

"Maisie Holland's two years old, Sherlock! Even if she's uninjured, she's in trouble if she's out in that weather. You're not being _practical_. You're being…"

"A psychopath?" Sherlock quietly suggested.

"If it were Molly and Charlie out there -"

Sherlock finally dropped the photograph he was holding and looked up at him. "If Molly and Charlie were out there somewhere," he snapped, "perhaps injured, almost certainly abducted, and it was because somebody had murdered and dismembered _you_ , I would be doing _exactly what I'm doing now_ to help."

In the silence between them, Sherlock listened to the sounds of the building around them - voices, computers, phones ringing - interspersed with the rain hammering the thick windows.

"Sherlock," John said. "Be straight with me here. Do you think Sadie and Maisie are alive?"

"I don't know." Sherlock, looking through the glass office door and seeing Lestrade approaching, stood up and brushed some imaginary dust off of his lapel. "Thank you," he said.

"For what?"

"For not asking me whether I _hope_ Sadie and Maisie are alive."

* * *

One of the downsides of living at Baker Street, as opposed to the middle-class niceties of the north-western suburbs, was that parking was at a premium, both literally and figuratively. It often wasn't available at all, and the nearest space was sometimes in the next street. When Molly arrived home from work at half-past three, with Charlie, tired out from a day at the hospital staff daycare centre, strapped into the back seat of the car, the spot she usually gunned for was occupied by someone's VW Golf.

She sighed heavily, but there was nobody to complain to except Charlie, who was too young to care. Besides, Molly had recently read a parenting book that absolutely forbid the foisting of "negative energy" onto young children. She put on a false smile and drove around the corner, and around again, a total of five times before she found a parking space a full three cross-streets from 221 Baker Street.

Well, that issue was certainly one for the "against" if she and John were debating just how long they were going to be living at Baker Street. She hoisted Charlie on her hip and her handbag on her shoulder, locked the car, and, wrestling with an unruly umbrella, made her way up the street toward the front door.

On the doorstep was a woman in her late twenties, engaged in the very act of ringing the doorbell. She was taller than average, with a full forehead, beaky nose, and dark blue eyes set a little too close together for beauty. She held an umbrella, but the gusts of wind tunnelling up the street had rendered it nearly useless, and her dark hair was dripping into her eyes. Molly had never seen her before… or had she…?

Molly had the keys in her hand by this time. The stranger turned to her; it was difficult to tell which woman was the more confused. Molly was now used to Sherlock's clients showing up at the flat on a near-daily basis, but this seemed different, somehow. This wasn't a client - or at least, she certainly wasn't a client Molly had ever seen before.

"Hello," the woman finally said. She seemed embarrassed but friendly. She held out her hand, waiting patiently as Molly struggled with her keys, umbrella and toddler to produce her right hand to shake. "I'm sorry to just barge in on you like this…"

She had a strong accent, but Molly, flustered as she was, couldn't place it. She hoisted Charlie in her arms, fighting the temptation to try to hide her face in her daughter's shoulder. "Oh, no, that's okay…"

"I'm looking for Sherlock Holmes...?"

"He's on a case," Molly said. "He'll be home tonight, I think." And, she hoped, John would be coming home with him. He had work the following day. It was John's usual habit to get up for work at 5am on a Tuesday morning.

The woman was no longer looking at her face, and Molly, looking first at Charlie and then down at herself, realised it was obvious at a glance that she was six months pregnant. She flushed hot. "Oh," she blurted out. "Oh, God, no, I'm not Sherlock's… I'm… I'm Molly," she said.

"Oh, Molly." The woman had a broad, almost horsey grin. "Sherlock's mentioned you. You're the pathologist he works with at the hospital - John's wife, right? I'm Christabel."

* * *

When Beryl had explained that her son-in-law was at work, Lestrade had immediately assumed some blue-collar occupation, one that wouldn't mind employing a convicted criminal who'd been in prison for nearly a year. But Adrian Frost didn't fit the bill for those assumptions. He was tall and angular, with a spike of dark hair and an almost boyish face, though his file said he was thirty-four. Dragged straight from his work to the hospital and then to the police station, he was wearing dark trousers and a blue-and-green striped shirt with _Fixitfast Computers_ embroidered on the front pocket. Lestrade took his time collecting Sherlock and John before finally making his way into the interview room. On seeing the trio, Adrian leaped out of his seat.

"What's happening with Siobhan?"

Lestrade glanced at Sherlock before he could help himself. Well, at least Adrian was having the right emotional reaction. Beryl and Chris Holland might not have given a damn between them about Sadie and Maisie, but by all appearances, Adrian was frantic about his wife. "Sit down," he said, glancing this time at Adrian's legal counsel, a white-haired man he'd seen about three thousand times and could never remember the name of. "We need to start proceedings officially, and then we'll talk, okay?"

He ran through those preliminaries at an almost breakneck speed. Since the interview with Derrick Rice, he couldn't guarantee that Sherlock wasn't going to provoke another interviewee into a meltdown. Adrian agreed to all of the official details, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.

"I just spoke with Siobhan's doctor," John finally told him. "She's stable and doing the best we can expect."

"But let's remember," Sherlock said, "that she's in the intensive care unit. And it's not a coincidence that she chose to try to hang herself five minutes after being interviewed by the police. She knows something, and so do you."

"I don't know anything." Adrian's voice sounded high and thin. "I would never… I would never," he finished up weakly.

"Siobhan can't talk for herself," Lestrade told him. "Since she's unconscious, it's up to you to man up and tell us if you murdered the Hollands. Did Beryl and Chris pay you to get rid of them, thinking they were going to inherit from Brett's will?"

Adrian traced on the table with his finger, his strokes aggressive, stabbing lines. Lestrade looked down, trying to make out what he was tracing. It wasn't hard to make out, as it happened: _NO NO NO NO NO NO_

"Inspector Lestrade," he said, "I think by now you've probably done your research, and you know why I torched the car."

"Tell me."

"You know."

"Maybe," Lestrade said. "But I think it's only fair if I get it straight from you. So tell me." He settled into the back of his chair, but Adrian dithered for a few seconds.

"I've never done drugs in my life," he finally began.

"Really? I think you're in a minority, mate." Lestrade remembered that he was being recorded just in time before he could make a confession of his own to Adrian - that he'd been known to smoke the occasional blunt during his final years at school. Pity. In his experience, suspects opened right up when presented with concrete proof that detectives weren't saints.

Adrian shook his head. "Ethan was a junkie," he said.

"Was?" According to the most recent records that the Metropolitan Police could get their hands on, Ethan Frost was alive, if not well, and living in a government flat in the inner East End.

"Well, I wouldn't know what he's doing these days, and frankly, I don't care. But he got into a pile of shit with his dealer. I mean, they were about at the level of cutting his fingers off when he came to me for help. That's when we came up with the idea to torch the car."

"Your car or his?" John asked him.

Adrian snorted. "Mine," he said. "As if Ethan's ever had enough of his shit together to buy a car! It was a silver Mazda RX-8, if you really need to know. We were going to split the insurance money between us. I'd buy a shitbox to get me to and from work, he'd pay off his debts and get clean, and I'd be the best big brother around."

"That's awfully generous of you."

Adrian shrugged. "We don't write off favours in our family," he said. "I'd have found something to call him in for later."

"Yeah," Lestrade said drily. "I think I know what that's like."

"It was an accident. Neither of us had tried to set something on fire with petrol before. I put the fire out. I called an ambulance. I did everything I could to help. I had no reason to set my own brother on fire!"

"Calm down. I get the idea." Lestrade cleared his throat. "We've just found out," he went on, "that Sadie's grandmother, a Margaret Callan, left her half a million pounds in her will when she died fifteen years ago." Well off from the 'over a million' Chris had cited, but Lestrade wouldn't have been too upset if _his_ grandmother had left him half a million when she'd died.

"Okay," Adrian said.

"And in the time they've been married, they've managed to chew through the whole lot," he went on. "Did Brett ever say anything about buying big-ticket items? Going into expensive business ventures?"

"What, apart from the yacht?"

"Yeah, apart from the yacht."

Adrian appeared to be considering this. Then he shook his head. "No," he said. "Unless you're counting Maisie."

"Maisie?"

"Hasn't anyone told you yet?" Adrian asked, looking genuinely surprised.

"Depends." Lestrade didn't like it when suspects tried to lead him around. "Told us what?"

"She's an IVF baby."

Lestrade willed himself not to glance at Sherlock, though he had plans to never let him forget that little omission from his god-like powers of observation. "Okay," he said. "What can you tell us about that?"

"What's there to tell? Brett and Sadie met at school. They got married when they were practically still kids, but they couldn't have any of their own."

"Do you know what the problem was?"

"Do you talk about that kind of thing with _your_ mates?"

Lestrade silently conceded the point. He was fairly sure more of Melissa's friends knew about his vasectomy than his own did.

"So anyway," Adrian went on. "They did IVF for years before Sadie had Maisie, and I remember Brett telling me years before she was born that they'd used up the rounds the NHS helped out with and had started to pay out privately for them. I don't know how much, but he said they were expensive. That's probably what he and Sadie spent all their money on." His face crumpled for a second and he bit his lip. "Nobody wanted to hurt Maisie, Inspector," he said. "If you're looking for someone who killed her, you won't find them in this family. Now, please, I need to see my wife…"

* * *

After Adrian's interview, Lestrade led him back to the front desk to process the necessary paperwork. Sherlock went with them, oblivious to the fact that John had wandered away, phone in hand. Once Adrian was given permission to go back to the hospital, Sherlock looked around and saw John standing at the end of the visitor's area near the vending machine, phone in his hand. He beckoned Sherlock over.

"What's wrong? Sherlock demanded, thoughts immediately going to Molly and Charlie. But while John looked nervous, clearly nothing horrible had just happened to his family.

"Uh…" John glanced down the corridor to where Greg was still talking to Adrian, as if worried about being overheard. "Sherlock," he said. "I've just had a call from Molly. She says Christabel's just shown up at the flat."

"Did she let her in?"

John blinked. "Uh, yeah," he said. "To our flat, anyway. That's what you do when someone-"

"No." Sherlock snatched John's phone out of his hands and put it to his ear. "Molly, no," he snapped into the receiver. "No-no-no. _No_ …"

It was too late. He was speaking to silence.

He threw the phone on the ground in disgust and strode across for the door. He'd made it down the slippery front steps and was making his way along the footpath for the northbound cab rank when he finally registered that, somewhere behind him, John calling him.

He ignored it as well as he was ignoring the downpour, and walked on.

"Hey," John said, grabbing at his sleeve to get his attention. Sherlock stopped and turned around, but looked around at his shoes, his hands, a passing car and just about everything available to him that wasn't John.

"Sherlock," John tried again over the roar of a passing bus. "All right, look, I've… respected your privacy…"

Sherlock snorted.

"What's going on? Don't look at me like that. You went to Germany for a case last summer, and I'm not stupid, Sherlock. You've been in contact with Christabel, and then you find a pretty thin excuse to go to Germany without me - you must've been planning to see her. You come back early, you never mention her again, and now she's just shown up at your flat and you're acting like she's kicked down your door. So just tell me, will you? What's - oh."

The 'oh' was so abrupt that it even derailed Sherlock. "What?" he asked, finally looking at John. He was shrugged into his jacket as if it offered him protection from the weather, but both of them were now soaked through to the skin.

"God, yes, that fits," John muttered. "You went to see Christabel when you were in Berlin and she had a visitor, didn't she?"

"Shut up." Sherlock turned away.

"Was it just your dad, or was it whatserface as well… you know, Christabel's mum?"

"Shut up."

"Nope." John grabbed at his arm again. "Sherlock, listen. If anything, my family's more complicated than yours, so I _get_ this, okay? You might be the world's only consulting detective, but you're not the only person who's got problems with your parents, so stop acting like you've got some deep, dark secret, will you? Did you see him? Your dad?"

Sherlock lit a cigarette and puffed in silence. Since this was an improvement on walking away, John waited it out patiently.

"He didn't see me," Sherlock finally said. "I was crossing the road and saw… it…" He gave a brief, humourless chuckle. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this, really."

"I do," John said. "It's 'cause I'm your friend."

Not knowing what to do with this declaration, Sherlock ignored it. "I went to see her at her flat."

"She invited you? She actually told you to come at a specific time?"

"Yes."

"And you saw your dad there, even if he didn't see you. So what, you think Christabel was trying for some sort of family reunion?"

"I find any other hypothesis problematic. She knew I was coming. He lives in America, so am I to assume he was just dropping in for a casual visit? It's almost impossible that she didn't know he would also be there. And that we reached her front doorstep at almost exactly the same time…" Sherlock fumbled in his coat pocket for a cigarette.

"Look, I don't know, Sherlock, maybe it's more logical to at least see her and hear her out," John said. "I mean, she's come all the way from Germany, and you don't even know what she wants yet."

"I know what I want," Sherlock said, lighting his cigarette. His gaze wandered back to the cab rank. "I want to find Sadie and Maisie Holland without dealing with some American woman in my flat."

* * *

Answer your phone. - S

\- Today 12:54pm

 

Answer your phone, Mycroft. - S

-Today 12:56pm

 

I'm in a meeting. - M

\- Today 12:57pm

 

You need to go to Baker Street. Now. - S

\- Today 12:57pm

 

May I enquire as to the occasion? - M

\- Today 12:59pm

 

Christabel's there with Molly. You need to tell her to go away. - S

\- Today 1:00pm

 

Tell her yourself. I told you I wasn't getting involved. - M

\- Today 1:02pm

 

I'm busy. - S

\- Today 1:03pm

 

So am I. - M

\- Today 1:03pm

 

I'm INVESTIGATING A MURDER. - S

\- Today 1:04pm

 

I'm SHUTTING DOWN HACKTIVISTS IN THE WHITEHALL EMPLOYEE DATABASE. - M

\- Today 1:04pm

 

Damn. - M

\- Today 1:05pm

 

I'll take the hacktivists. You take Christabel. - S

\- Today 1:05pm

 

And the murder you're investigating? - M

\- Today 1:06pm

 

Shut up. - S

\- Today 1:06pm

 

Not nice, little brother. No, I won't be telling Christabel to go away. - M

\- Today 1:10pm

 

Please. - S

\- Today 1:15pm

 

Please, Mycroft. - S

\- Today 1:21pm

 

Please. - S

\- Today 1:22pm

 

Please - S

\- Today 1:22pm

 

Stop ignoring me. - S

\- Today 1:24pm

 

Please - S

\- Today 1:26pm

 

Please - S

\- Today 1:28pm

 

Oh, for God's sake. - M

\- Today 1:28pm


	7. Suitcases

Mycroft arrived at 221 Baker Street shortly after. He had a key, but on thinking about it, decided it would be best to ring the doorbell. When he didn't hear it echoing anywhere in the flat, he rapped with the knocker instead. In a few seconds he heard a snatch of feminine voice and footsteps in the front hall, and then the door abruptly gave way. He looked up, expecting to see Molly, and found himself looking at Harriet Watson.

In a moment of panic, he wondered whether all that money he'd invested into her alcohol therapy had been wasted. But after that moment, he put his wits and observational skills in order. Harry _did_ have a drink in one hand, but it was clearly mineral water. She was flushed and dishevelled, her smile almost goofy, but Harry Watson loved to have fun and knew how to, even in the strangest of circumstances. On seeing him, though, her expression changed. Bringing her glass of mineral water with her, she moved past him onto the step and shut the door behind them.

"I won't waste words," she said, and before Mycroft could point out that she was currently doing so, followed up with, "you're pretty much fucked, Mycroft. Did you know your sister's in there?'

"She's not my sister," Mycroft said snippishly. "She's my father's daughter."

"Seriously?" Harriet swept a lock of hair off her face with one hand. "John and I, we've got a few cousins who are complete arseholes. As in, real, pretend-I'm-hospitalised-so-I-don't-have-to-attend-their-weddings arseholes. But we don't call them our _grandparents' grandchildren,_ for fuck's sake. You and your brother have weird priorities."

"Yes, thank you for your input," Mycroft said.

"She's great, though, your sister. I like her. If you're here to tell her to piss off, I'm going to tell her she can stay at my place."

"You will do nothing of the sort," Mycroft seethed, with a sudden anger that alarmed him more than Harry. "You will stay out of this entirely."

Harry held her hands up in apparent surrender, though Mycroft had serious doubts as to whether she'd given in. You never trusted an immediate surrender. "Fine," she said. "Just saying, she's really nice, so you might want to hold the pyroclastic flow until you actually talk to her." She reached for the door handle and tried it. "Fuck," she muttered. "I've locked us out."

"I have a key," Mycroft explained, before she could knock on the door again.

"Of course you do," she said, moving aside so he could use it. "And even if you didn't, I bet you could break in. Wouldn't that be more fun?"

When Mycroft first laid eyes on his half-sister, she was sitting, one leg draped over the other, on Molly's insufferably feminine sofa. Molly sat in the armchair opposite, and on the coffee table between them sat two glasses, each half-filled with mineral water, and half a loaf of store-bought pound cake still sitting on its baking-paper nest. Charlie was in the act of grasping at the cake with her chubby fingers.

"Oh, no, Charlie," Molly scolded mildly. "That's for the grown-ups…"

_Oh, well, isn't this cosy?_

Christabel scooped Charlie up in her arms and tickled her, _(just as if she were a favourite aunt),_ and the toddler screamed in delight. Mycroft took advantage of the five or so seconds this occupied to observe his father's daughter.

To say that Christabel looked like a feminine version of himself was a gross simplification. After all, she held many features that were apparently bequeathed to her by her maternal side. But she bore enough resemblance to the Holmes side of the family to put Mycroft in a bad state of unease. At this point Harry barged past him, causing Christabel to look up and see him for the first time. Her smile faded. She set Charlie down on the floor and stood up.

"Hello," she said.

He beckoned.

Beckoning was always a risk. Most people heeled; an almost innate instinct when faced with casual authority. But Sherlock had never obeyed it. He was a Holmes.

 _Nonsense,_ he reminded himself as Christabel followed him out into the front passage and he shut the flat door behind them. After all, John wasn't a Holmes, and he had never responded to hand signals, either. Once, he'd tried beckoning Detective Inspector Lestrade and been genuinely taken aback by the way he'd rounded on him: _I don't come when you call me. I'm not your dog._

"Let's get this over with, shall we?" he said, the very moment the door shut. "I will reimburse you for your time and travel expenses, and you will go back to Germany and not contact Sherlock again."

Christabel's mouth fell open like a trapdoor. Then she started to laugh; a throaty, dull-edged sound.

"I fail to see what's so amusing," Mycroft said sourly.

"Then you don't know me very well, Mycroft," she said, then frowned. "Mycroft? You don't shorten that to anything?"

Mycroft shook his head.

"Well." Christabel shrugged. "To each their own, I guess. But when my parents saddled me with _Christabel Beatrice Lenore Holmes_ , I made the most of a bad situation and mostly go by Christa."

"Beatrice," Mycroft said dully. "His -"

"His mother's name, yeah. She died before I was born."

"Yes, I know. 1987." Mycroft had never been officially notified of the passing of a grandmother he'd had respect for, if not actual affection; but he was not an MI6 operative for nothing.

"If it makes you feel any better about me being here," Christabel said, "I don't want your money."

"I'm sorry?"

She shrugged. "If you ask Dad, the Holmes estate is like a dragon's hoard. Barrels of gold."

"Hardly." Mycroft snorted. "Matchboxes of gold, perhaps. The odd cigar box full of rubies…"

"See?" she said, eyes glimmering in something close to camaraderie. "That was almost a joke. Anyway, I'm not here for your matchboxes. So don't worry about that."

"Why would I worry about that?"

"You answer questions by asking more questions," she said. "Just… maybe you didn't notice that. And to answer your question, you seem really… bothered… by money. You think giving me some is going to put me off meeting my brother." She paused. "My other brother, I mean. It doesn't work with me, Mycroft."

"Oh?"

"I'm a woman of experience there. I met my husband Carsten when I was sixteen. We were skiing at Copper Mountain. He was an exchange student from Bonn. My dad offered me ten thousand dollars to never see him again. I took his money and gave it to Carsten to buy himself some clothes to impress dad with. Turns out it wasn't being working-class that dad was bothered by."

"Of course not," Mycroft said scathingly. "I could have told you that."

"Yeah, well, you weren't around to ask. Did he ever talk about the war?"

Mycroft cast his mind back. "Not often," he said carefully. If he admitted to too much, she might urge him to share the moments when his father's tongue had loosened a little. Those memories were for him. She had her own. "I know he was a small child during the Blitz," he offered.

"But not an evacuee."

"No. They had a country house."

"So he wasn't an evacuee and neither he nor his father saw active service, so there was no need for him to be an asshole to Carsten just because he's German." She shrugged. "That was eleven years ago. Once he knew Carsten wasn't going anywhere, he got used to it."

"Such a fascinating story-"

"You know what my point is."

Mycroft paused, just for a moment. This was one argument he knew he couldn't win with verbal sledgehammers and issuing orders. No, this called for more subtle conversational gymnastics. He doubted Christabel would be able to keep up. "Amazing," he said.

"What is?"

"That you've had twenty-seven years to show some interest in Sherlock, and haven't done so until now."

Christabel raised one eyebrow. "Don't think you can put me off," she said, more seriously now. "I came here to see Sherlock, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm my father's daughter, Mycroft."

"Indeed?" Mycroft returned. "In that case, it won't be difficult for you to leave Sherlock alone for the next thirty-six years."

* * *

Jake Dyer opened his eyes. He was in the back of the car, seatbelt forcing him upright and digging in just under his ribs. The car weaved its way along an ocean promenade, a spectacular view ruined somewhat by the dreary weather. After a second, he realised what had woken him. Halloran, in the driver's seat, was muttering to himself. "Shit. Shit…"

"Wake up, Dyer," Donovan said. He sat up straight and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"What…"

"Don't ask me until you've looked out the window," she said.

He looked out onto a basin-shaped marina, beyond which stone walls shut out the greater perils of the open sea. On the northbound edge stood a small crowd of people, including a handful of people in high-visibility overalls and no less than four officers in uniform.

"Shit," Halloran said again, implementing the handbrake by way of punctuation.

"Untwist," Donovan said, reaching down toward her ankles to pick up her handbag. "Could be anything. That bloke looks like a Detective Inspector McMannis, what do you reckon?"

By now Dyer could see an older man in a white shirt and black trousers approaching the car purposefully. Much older than Lestrade - pushing seventy, if his guess was near the mark. He had a thicket of white hair cut low over his blue eyes, and his nose and ears were red from long being battered by the winds of the Cornish coast. Although it wasn't currently raining, he was wet, with sand on the knees of his trousers.

Donovan opened the car door. "Detective Inspector McMannis?" he heard her say as she stood up and offered him her hand. "I'm Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan, Metropolitan Police. What's going on?"

"Just in time, Sergeant," he said grimly. "The search crew have just dredged up a weighted suitcase from the bay floor."

"Great," Donovan muttered. "You've found the rest of the body."

McMannis shook his head. "Forensics have opened the suitcase," he said, "but we knew you were coming, so we left the contents alone waiting for you to get here. An arm, two legs and a torso, but we're still missing the head."

~~o0o~~

Halloran, who of the three Metropolitan detectives was the most socially adept, wandered off to interview various members of the search team and constabulary on the circumstances of this newest find. Everything had to be documented, in case court evidence depended on it. Donovan marched straight over to the white protective tent that had been erected around the suitcase, opening the entrance flap and clambering in without a second's hesitation.

Dyer paused at the entrance.

"Hey," he heard her call from the other side. "Hurry up."

Donovan was crouched beside a large, tattered suitcase, the sort you might take with you if you went overseas for three months. It was unzipped but closed, covered in seaweed and sludge, but Donovan was poking at the lid with what seemed to be the first item available to her - a pen.

"Shouldn't we leave that?" Dyer asked, trying to sound more sensible and less fearful. "I mean, um. Until forensics get here."

"Well, we're not taking anything out," Donovan pointed out. Dyer felt, rather than saw, the tent flap behind him open again and McMannis shuffling in behind him. Donovan looked past Dyer's shoulder at him.

"Sir," she said, and Dyer was reminded for the first time that McMannis outranked all of them. "Do you mind if I open it and have a look? I won't touch."

McMannis shrugged. "It's the Met's case now, sergeant, if you think it'll - Christ almighty!"

Dyer shoved his balled fist between his teeth and turned to face the wall. An involuntary act, and for the first few seconds, he didn't care who saw it. It wasn't the white limbs packed close in the suitcase, white and melting into one another like church tapers, that had done it; nor had it been the exposed vertibrae stump or the jagged edge of a severed shoulder joint. The smell had just blasted his mouth dry.

"Mate?" he heard McMannis say over his shoulder, but it felt like he was at the other end of the marina. "'You all right?"

He took a breath through his fist, but before he felt capable of responding without retching, he heard Donovan say, "Could you give us a minute, please?"

He made himself turn around. There was Donovan, as casual and unbothered as if she were about to suggest they wander up to the main road for some fish and chips. McMannis looked from Donovan to Dyer and back, then nodded. Dyer tried to keep his eyes on Donovan, though he could see the older detective out of the corner of his eye. No sooner had he left than Donovan said, "Harden the fuck up, Jake."

He glanced up at her. "What?"

"Lestrade watches you," she said. "I mean, yeah, he watches all of us; that's part of his job. But you especially. And me. He watches me 'cause I'm a woman, and he watches you 'cause you're the runt of the litter." She stabbed the air with her pen. "And I'll tell you what he's watching for," she went on. "Weakness. He won't put up with a detective who throws up and cries at the sight of a dead body, and while we're here and I'm in charge, neither will I."

"I didn't-"

"You got a bit of leeway 'cause you were so young when you came in, but that time's over. So just get on with it."

"If you could give me some practical pointers on how to 'get on with it', I could really use them right now," he said. "Sorry, but I'm standing next to a torso someone's shoved into a suitcase and thrown into the ocean. They don't have this scenario in our training manual."

"Well, stop trying to run your career off a bloody training manual." Donovan let out a breath. How she was still breathing normally amidst the putrefaction coming out of the suitcase was beyond him. "You've got two options," she said. "Either you can tell yourself this is just a lump of meat - and you're not far off, because, you know, once a person dies… Notice how we've stopped calling that -" she gestured - "Brett?"

Dyer nodded.

"The other thing you need to do is make the most of it. Brett's dead. We're too late to save his life, but we can catch the bastard who did it, and even better, there's a woman and a kid out there we might be able to _save_. And every second of every minute we're getting closer to that, if we don't give up and fall apart over someone who died four days ago. Clear?"

"Yes, m- I mean, clear."

"I'm calling in your best mate, Jake. I think this is something Sherlock needs to see."

Before Dyer could express any opinion on whether he was Sherlock's 'best mate', Donovan had edged past him to the entrance of the tent and put her head out. Through the whoosh of blood in his ears he heard her say, "Inspector McMannis, Constable Dyer was just wanting to give you his observations of the body."

_What?_

Dyer suddenly felt like he had the day, just after his sixth birthday, when his father had taught him to swim by pushing him off a pier. His mother had been almost as horrified as him, but Dad, who had no time for weaklings, had remained defiant. _Oh, give it a rest, Hann, he didn't drown, did he?_

Dimly, he heard the protective flap at the entrance of the tent being opened and McMannis edged his way in. With the four officers, it was starting to become crowded. McMannis, now standing at parade rest, cleared his throat. After a few seconds to collect his scattered wits, Dyer got down on his haunches beside the suitcase.

"Uh," he said, resisting the urge to swipe at his brow. "It looks to me like they've… the killer… they've dismembered the body and stuffed it in the suitcase to weight it and throw it into the ocean."

"Yes," Donovan said.

"But they ran out of room. It's like a human tetris in this thing. So, uh, they tied the arm to the outside of the case before..." He mimed a throwing motion. "I don't know what they did with the head. Might have been the same thing. And then, um, along comes the shark and rips the arm off the side of the suitcase for breakfast."

McMannis nodded. "Yes," he said. "That seems the way of it. What else can you think of?"

Dyer thought. "Forensics are sure there was no blood on the _Marie Celeste_?"

"Nothing they thought was significant," McMannis said. "Some small and very old shadow-stains on the bedsheets that are probably menstrual blood. A trace in the corner near Maisie's cot that could have been a nosebleed or the like, but not even close to crime-scene levels."

"Then they had to have done this somewhere that wasn't the _Marie Celeste._ But probably a boat, 'cause if you did it on dry land you'd hardly be likely to put the body back on a ship and take it out to open ocean when you could hide it or bury it. So someone approached them in another boat, attacked and killed Brett Holland on _their_ boat, and… maybe Sadie and Maisie as well." He perked up. "Derrick Rice," he said. "He's the only person they personally knew in Cornwall who also had a boat. What was it called again?"

* * *

Sherlock concluded his call with Lestrade and put his phone in his pocket. The cab had nearly reached Baker Street - less than five minutes to go. But sitting across from him, John did not ask about the call. He looked pensive.

"John-"

"I can't go," he said, rubbing the ball of one hand down his knee. Sherlock frowned. It had been literally years since John had suffered any sort of psychosomatic pain. According to Mycroft, it hadn't even shown back up during the time he'd pretended to be dead. Surely it was impossible that…

Just a tic.

"Work," John went on, as if being gainfully employed was something to be ashamed of. "I can't call in tomorrow unless it's for a really good reason."

Sherlock stopped himself before he could point out that a murder and kidnapping investigation was a really good reason to miss work. Evidently, the hospital didn't share his priorities, and John's was in earning a wage to support his family.

"Both Molly and I've got Wednesday off," John was saying. "We could join you tomorrow night. But it'll be late when we get there, and we need to bring Charlie."

Sherlock cleared his throat. "Well," he said. "As it turns out, you'll be of far better use to the investigation at the hospital tomorrow morning than _en route_ to Cornwall. Lestrade is requesting Rice come down to further assist, but more than likely the Hollands will stay here, and the Monashes will arrive in London in a few hours. Keep an eye on them."

"I'll be at work, Sherlock," John protested.

"Yes. At work. Only a floor beneath Siobhan Frost's bedside."

"I'll be _working_."

"Excellent. You can give me your findings when we meet tomorrow night. We're staying at Lamorna Cove. Lestrade will text you the address."

John leaned back in his seat and sighed.

~~o0o~~

The car pulled up at the kerb three and a half minutes later. Although Molly was clearly home, Sherlock let himself in with the key. The light in the front passage burned dimly. On the third-bottom step sat Christabel.

"Hi, Sherlock," she said in a little voice. Her American accent curled around the _r_ sound in her brother's name.

John, who'd frozen in the doorway like a guilty party, made a move to get past Sherlock. "Um," he said. "I'll, uh. Talk to you later."

And then, traitorously, he'd slunk into 221a, leaving Sherlock and Christabel alone in the front passage together. Christabel stood, and Sherlock saw for the first time how tall she was, only an inch or two or shorter than himself. A big, loose-limbed woman. For a moment, he remembered the Arab mare Mycroft had been given as a gift on leaving school.

"Hello." He removed his scarf and hung it up on the coat stand, though he rarely used that one and would much have preferred to leave his scarf on this time. His neck felt vulnerable now, as if he were preparing for the guillotine, and he was acutely aware that she was watching his every move and weighing him against something he had no knowledge of.

"I didn't want to meet you like this, Sherlock," she said at last. "I wanted it to be when you came to Germany."

"Yes," Sherlock said. "In the presence of a man who wants nothing to do with me."

Her shoulders dropped. "Okay," she said. "Look, I might have made a mistake there."

"You think?"

"Looking more and more likely," she said. She looked down at her hands, weaving her fingers in and out of each other, then took a deep breath. "I'm sorry Dad was such a dick to you. I didn't know how much until Mycroft told me about it.* I'm not going to sit here and excuse that at all. But he doesn't hate you, you know."

"Good for him," Sherlock retorted. "I've given him no reason to."

"You look-"

"I really don't," he said.

"No, okay, you don't," she agreed, abruptly swerving from that landmine. "Does Mycroft ever, though!" She gave a soft whistle.

"You've met?"

She nodded. "Yeah, if you could call it that," she said, grasping a wisp of her hair with three fingers and twisting idly at it. Her dark hair was loose and dishevelled into heavy clumps - obviously, Sherlock thought, she'd been drenched earlier in the day. "He tried to pay me to not be here when you got home," she went on.

"Did you take his money?"

"Of course I did. I'm a Holmes too, you know." She wrapped both arms around her knees and rested her chin on them. "Your mom must have been beautiful," she said suddenly.

"She was," Sherlock found himself saying. To his continuing surprise, he also avoided the observation _and evidently, your mother was not_. It was obvious, though. Martine Bernier was pure _peasant_ stock. He ground the expression out with a glee he didn't understand. He'd never, not even in the innermost privacy of his thoughts, used that term about someone living in the twenty-first century.

"Nice place." Christabel stretched her legs out, wincing slightly as she did.

"Thank you." _Knee reconstruction._ Sherlock watched her draw her leg out away from her using both hands clasped around her kneecap. _Probably from her late teens or early twenties. Sporting injury. Skiing._

Christabel seemed to be floundering by now. "Your niece is real cute," she said.

"She's not my niece."

"Molly said she was."

"She's _not_ my niece." Sherlock, unable to stand still a second longer, reached up to tug his scarf off. His chilly fingertips met only the nape of his neck. Embarrassed, he tweaked at his collar instead, eyes straying up the staircase.

Baker Street was his place, his sanctuary. Mrs Hudson would never have let in some American woman claiming to be his sister.

"This is all very interesting, but I'm afraid I don't have the time for it," he said, reaching for the balustrade. "Unfortunate consequence of arriving at a person's home unannounced."

"Sherlock-"

"Now if you'll excuse me. I'm going to Cornwall."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For details on my AU regarding Mycroft and Sherlock's parents, see my one-shot "Leavetaking."


	8. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, again, for all your support xx

The lights were down when John entered 221a, and both bedroom doors were open only a crack. He checked in on Charlie, finding her sleeping diagonally in her cot, and shifted her without waking her before going softly into his own bedroom. Molly lay bundled up under the covers and seemed to be asleep, but as he fumbled with his shoes and jeans in the darkness, he felt, rather than saw, her watching him.

"What happened?" she finally asked. "Between Sherlock and Christabel, I mean."

"Don't know. I left them to it." John sat down on the mattress, checking first that there wasn't a cat in his way. "What's she like?"

Molly sat up, brushing her hair out of her eyes as she thought about this until she finally came up with, "She's nice. No, I mean, she's not… I… I don't know, really..."

"That doesn't sound like she's 'nice', Lolly."

"Everything she said and did _was_ really nice," Molly insisted. "Charlie likes her. She was awfully embarrassed about just showing up—I'm not sure she knew that we live here, too. Then Mycroft came and took her out. Harry was listening at the door. She said he tried to pay Christabel go back to Germany, but that she'd said no, she'd leave that up to Sherlock."

"Told Mycroft where to get off. I like her already."

They could both still hear voices from the front passage of the flat; Sherlock's baritone, slower than usual, and Christabel's tart American vowels interjecting every now and again. As for the details of what they were saying, no words were distinct enough, and both Sherlock and his half-sister sounded conversational. Not a row, in any case.

"Maybe," Molly ventured, "if I got up to the kitchen to get a drink, and I went near the door… not leaning on it, like Harry did…"

 _"Mrs. Watson,"_ John admonished her. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were suggesting going out there to eavesdrop."

"You aren't even a little bit curious?"

"Dying," he confessed. "But I think it's pretty serious this time. I wouldn't try Sherlock on it, and if there's anyone who'd know he was being spied on, it's him. He's off to Cornwall for this case, so I'm assuming he's going to send her packing."

"Sherlock's going on his own…?"

"Well, with Greg, I think. I've got work tomorrow, haven't I." Before Molly had a chance to respond he went on, "I said we could probably go down there tomorrow night—I'm sure Forensics down there could do with help from you, too. I mean, if you want to go. Otherwise we-"

"It sounds nice," she said, though John wasn't sure whether she was referring to Cornwall or the case. "And Charlie might have fun, too, even if it's raining. She's never seen the ocean."

At this, John stopped. "What do you mean, she's never seen the ocean?"

"Well, she hasn't." Molly made a movement in the darkness that was the equivalent of a shrug.

"We just had a weekend in Brighton," he pointed out.

"For our anniversary," she said, "six weeks ago—and we didn't take Charlie."

John silently conceded the point. They'd left Charlie with Bill and Laura, though Molly had suggested asking Sherlock if he'd mind babysitting overnight. John had firmly overruled that idea. No point in a romantic weekend away if you spent it worried that your firstborn was going to become the science experiment of a mad genius and you'd come home to find her with no eyebrows. "Well," he said, "we took her to Norfolk that time, didn't we?"

"No," she said. "You went for a case. We stayed here."

He looked at her properly this time. "Okay," he said. "I'm sensing some criticism from the gallery. You know we were all set for that fortnight away, until a pair of psychopaths broke into our house."

"Yes," she agreed readily. "I didn't mean it was your fault. Just that… it'd be nice to take Charlie somewhere before the weather really sets in, that's all."

She didn't finish where her mind had surely just gone: _And before we've got newborn twins to deal with._ He decided to leave things with the Cornish weather and drew her closer to him, snaking one hand under the covers and running it up her thigh. Her warm skin gave off a light, floral scent.

"I like that," he said, kissing her neck and breathing it in. "What is it?"

"Just shower gel."

"… You've been wearing it for weeks, haven't you."

"Since Saturday."

"Okay." He slid one hand under her head, weaving heavy locks of her hair between his fingers, and took a deep breath. "I'll put in for some time off tomorrow," he said, running his finger gently down the bridge of her nose. "When we've solved this case, we're going to Paris for a week…" He stopped before he could spoil the moment by declaring that even _three_ psychopaths weren't going to interrupt his plans this time.

Her eyes started smiling before her lips could get there. "Paris is so beautiful," she said. "We haven't been there since our honeymoon."

"You can't tell me we didn't take Charlie that time," John teased her, planting another kiss on her neck. "Even if we didn't know she was there."

They lay in companionable silence for a time, listening to the familiar sound of Charlie snuffling in her sleep in the room next door, and it was then that John realised that the voices in the front hall had stopped. Before he could remark on it, he heard the front door snick shut— not a slam— and Sherlock's heavy tread on the stairs above.

"John?" Molly murmured.

"Mmm?"

"Do you like being a doctor?"

The question was so unexpected that he spent a few seconds collecting an answer. "Yeah," he said. "I do. I didn't study something I don't like for eight years. I just… prefer stabbings to getting ballpoint pens out of kids' noses."

* * *

Lestrade choked down a handful of aspirin and chased it with water from the cooler in the hospital corridor. The water was room temperature and bitter as sin, but he wasn't sure if that was the aftertaste from the aspirin or something else. It didn't matter. At some point that evening, endless cups of coffee had simply stopped working. Or rather, they'd brought on a racing heartbeat, a throbbing headache and a need to piss every ten minutes, but hadn't done anything for his energy levels at all.

He had just over an hour to kill before he was due to meet Sherlock at Baker Street. They'd arranged to drive down to Cornwall together that night, since every minute that passed could be a minute that Sadie and her child were in desperate need of help. Impossible to reread witness statements with his head the way it was, so he'd returned to the hospital to ask the officers posted at Siobhan Frost's hospital room whether there'd been any change in her condition.

No such luck. The only thing, PC Dianne Walsh had told him, was that every hour she didn't die meant she was less likely to.

Great.

He dipped his fingers into the Styrofoam cup he held and flicked the tepid water onto his face, swiping it up toward his hairline. The relative coolness helped a little. Then, leaving the cup sitting on the edge of the water cooler, he wandered back down the corridor to the waiting area. Almost deserted—he could see only a young man flanked by two sleepy, flannel-clad kids of about six and eight, and Beryl Holland seated in the corner, as far away from Siobhan's room as she could be without actually leaving the area. She was dressed in what was clearly her Sunday best—black slacks, white blouse, red coat, gaudy diamente brooch— and clutched a black leather handbag on her lap. There was no way to legally interview her under the circumstances, but Lestrade sat down beside her anyway. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes.

"Do you have children, Inspector Lestrade?" she asked dully.

"Yeah," he said. "Two."

"And how do you think you might feel if one of them was murdered and the other was in a coma?"

Lestrade tried to imagine it— then immediately backed out. He already spent enough time worrying about those two. And now Hayley was moving in with Jake—Sherlock had said it was a dead-sure thing. Neither had said anything about it to him yet, but Sherlock's clues, at least, were obvious. Hayley'd gone all… domestic. She'd even offered to make dinner the other night. The pasta she'd come up with had been on the ordinary side, but neither he nor Melissa knew much more about an oven than how to turn it on, so there wasn't room for too much criticism.

He'd worry about Hayley and Jake at a more convenient time.

And he'd definitely not spend any more time trying to imagine what he'd feel like if Matthew was dead and Hayley was unconscious after a suicide attempt.

"Yeah," he finally mumbled. Ridiculously vague, but Beryl seemed not to notice.

"And then," she went on, "how might you feel, do you think, if someone came along and accused you of murdering one and causing the other one to hang herself?"

"I wouldn't be happy," he agreed mildly. "But I'd also be keen to tell the police what actually happened. Is your husband here, Mrs. Holland?"

"Chris?" she enquired, as if she had several husbands. "He went home to bed… oh, don't give me that look. He's an old man, Inspector, and these chairs give his back misery. Besides, it gave us an excuse to try to get Adrian to go home and sleep, too."

"He seems very devoted to Siobhan," Lestrade said carefully.

"He is. One of his few virtues."

Lestrade, battling his pounding brain, scrambled for something to say next. The last thing they needed was Beryl offended and being difficult. "I can see why you wouldn't be so keen on him," he said. Adrian Frost seemed a nice enough guy to him, but he wasn't around to be offended. "Much less have to share a bathroom with him. So what happened, that you and Chris had to move in with Siobhan and Adrian?"

Beryl hesitated.

"I'm going to find out, Beryl. And I'm going to be more than a bit pissed off if we have to waste time and resources finding out when you could just tell me right now."

"We loaned the Monashes fifty thousand pounds," she said. "And a bit. All we had."

"What for?"

"They were establishing their school in Kenya and needed the outlay."

Lestrade frowned. "Well, that was nice of you," he said.

"Most stupid thing we've ever done," she said bitterly. "They said they'd repay us in a year. That was before Maisie was born, Inspector, and we still haven't seen a penny of that money. Jimmy Monash keeps sending us letters telling us all the good they've done with it, but that they haven't had the financial returns they expected and could we wait a little longer? We're in our sixties. We could be dead before we get that money back… assuming Jackie and Jimmy even intend to pay it back. I'm starting to doubt it."

The Monashes were due to touch down at Heathrow in the early hours of the following morning. Lestrade made a mental note to make sure they had a police escort from the airport. No telling what Beryl or Chris might do if they felt like the Monashes had stolen their life savings. Perhaps they had. Another lead to chase up.

"But if Sadie's grandmother left her all this money," he said, "why didn't they just ask their own daughter for a loan?"

Beryl scoffed. "They did," she said. "Sadie's as mean as cat shit. There was something to do with the will… Sadie's grandmother didn't like Jimmy, didn't want Jackie to marry him, and didn't want Jimmy to get a penny of her money. I'd like to think Sadie was just trying to do what her grandmother would have wanted by saying no to the loan, but…" She shrugged. "They bought the yacht soon after. I suppose they were trying to spend the money so that they could say no to lending it with a clear conscience. At first I just assumed it was just a little one-sail thing, but when we were down at Christmas… I told Brett then."

"What did you tell him?"

"We had a row," she said. "I can tell you, I wasn't happy - and I'm telling _you_ , Inspector, because you seem nice. I wasn't happy. I'd just lent Jackie Monash my retirement savings and those two bought a yacht so they didn't have to fork any of Sadie's money over. We'd earned our money - worked hard for nearly a hundred years between us for it. Brett didn't even _inherit_ his money, he married it!"

* * *

By the time Sherlock came back downstairs, bringing a suitcase with him, all was quiet and still. He'd heard Christabel leaving as he'd reached the top of the stairs earlier, though he had no idea where she'd gone and was even less sure if he cared. The light in the hall was dimmed and there was darkness and silence from behind the door of 221a. A different kind of darkness and silence, though, from that which had practically oozed out from under the door for three months after Mrs. Hudson had died.

Lestrade was waiting for him, parked illegally on the kerb. Sherlock threw the suitcase into the boot, slammed it shut, then got in the passenger side door. It wasn't raining, though the street was slick and shining under the streetlights. Lestrade gave a vague sort of grunt by way of greeting, but he looked more absent than usual, and neither of them spoke until they were on the M4 and leaving London behind them.

"Okay," Lestrade finally said. "Take things from the top. And treat me like I'm stupid—that should be pretty easy for you."

Sherlock stirred. "It begins with the death of Sadie's grandmother," he said, unaware of any sarcasm on Lestrade's part.

"Okay," he said. "So the grandmother dies, Sadie gets the money. Then?"

"Then Sadie has trouble conceiving, and she and Brett begin IVF treatment. Their allocation from the NHS runs out, and then they begin to pay for rounds of IVF privately. Sadie eventually conceives, they move to Cornwall, and then when their daughter is just over a year old, they buy a yacht."

 _"After_ Jackie Monash has already asked Sadie for a loan," Lestrade said. "I checked with Beryl. So her mum asks her for a loan, she says no, and then she and Brett go and by a whacking great yacht that sends them broke and from what we can tell, they ended up living on it—or living somewhere that wasn't the house they were renting, anyway. Meanwhile, Sadie's in-laws spot her parents the money, they don't get it back, _they_ go broke and end up living in a flat with Brett's sister and her husband, who's got a criminal record for setting his brother on fire during a botched insurance job."

"Summed up admirably."

"Am I just not getting it again, or is there something really weird about all of this?"

"Those two things aren't mutually exclusive."

"I love you, too. Speaking of, where's your handler?"

"Asleep, is my best deduction." Sherlock looked out onto the dark fields beyond the motorway, but all he could see in the darkness was a ridge of lit houses on the horizon and the reflection of the dashboard lights on the window pane. "He's working tomorrow and Friday, but he and Molly are meeting us at the hotel tomorrow night."

"Oh, no, bugger _that_ ," Lestrade said. "A ten-hour round trip over two days, in between twelve-hour shifts? Forget it. I'll get in touch with Barts and Hammersmith, tell them John and Molly are needed on a time-sensitive kidnapping case. That should give them both a week off, at least, unless Molly's a shift away from curing cancer or something."

"And everyone will agree to that?"

"Can't see why they wouldn't. Time-sensitive case with a missing kid."

"Lestrade," Sherlock said abruptly. "Answer me this. Don't hesitate. _What's the missing kid's name?"_

When Lestrade had paused for two seconds, Sherlock said, "Pull over."

"What?"

"You heard me perfectly, and I'm not saying it again."

Lestrade slowed the car, looking for a level spot on the side of the motorway where it would be safe to stop. As soon as he'd brought the car to a halt Sherlock released his seat belt and got out, crossing the headlights and opening the driver's side door. He held his hand out expectantly.

"What?"

"I'm driving."

"What? Why?"

"Because you're sleep-deprived to the point that you can't even remember one of the victim's names. Give me the keys."

"I-"

"I'm _not_ arguing with you about this; my brain is far too important for it to be splattered over your windshield after you fall asleep at the wheel and hit a truck head-on. You can sleep in the back seat."

A shoulder of gravel on the M4 was no place to have an argument with Sherlock Holmes, and Lestrade wasn't even sure he wanted to. The back seat of the car wasn't the most appealing beds he'd ever seen, but it was looking pretty good under the circumstances. He got out and opened the back door, shifting the pile of paperwork on the back seat onto the floor and moving the seats back as far as they could be moved. Sherlock got into the driver's seat and waited as he took off his jacket and shoes and finally climbed in.

"You know this is illegal," Lestrade mumbled, curling up on the seat as Sherlock started the engine.

"I have a license," Sherlock reminded him snippily.

"No, I mean I think I'm pushing the idea of a seatbelt a bit far, here."

"I'm sure you'll be able to talk your way out of a ticket." Sherlock adjusted the rear-vision mirror and changed lanes at the same time. "I'll wake you when we get to Penzance."


	9. In Search of Lost Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading. Your reviews have been deeply cherished, even if I'm horrible at remembering to reply to them personally! Xx

Sherlock and Lestrade arrived in Lamorna Cove before dawn. Lestrade, who'd slept solidly on the back seat the entire way there, barely woke up for long enough to get out of the car, retrieve his luggage and shuffle into the resort, a sort of extra-large house nestled in the cliffs above the cove. During summer, he thought blearily, the place probably did a roaring trade. But nobody would choose a holiday by the sea in the cold and rain, and the Metropolitan Police had rented the entire house, both as accommodation for the London detectives and as a base and research centre. The closest police station was in Penzance, and too far away to be particularly practical, Detective Jake Dyer explained, meeting them in the car park to help take their luggage in. As they reached the doorway, Donovan also met them. She was wrapped in her dressing gown and it was obvious she'd just woken up.

"Room four, sir," she said, handing over a set of keys hanging off a pink plastic ID tag. "DI McMannis will be here for a briefing at eight. Mel didn't come with you, then?"

Lestrade took the keys from her and drew up his sleeve to check his watch. Quarter to five. Sherlock Holmes could drive like a demon, apparently. Looking across at Sherlock, who was also taking a set of keys from Donovan, it occurred to him that he hadn't slept the night before. Well, they could tag-team it. "She's testifying in court tomorrow." He stifled a yawn into his hand. "The Sacco case. Looks like it's going to be a doozy. Anything new to report?"

"Not sure we can cover it right this minute. Short story is 'no'," Donovan said, more to Sherlock than to Lestrade. "We went out to the Holland's house yesterday afternoon… calm down, there wasn't much evidence to wreck. They've had new tenants in since Brett and Sadie moved out."

Sherlock hissed under his breath in disappointment. "You didn't see anything significant?"

"Well, the landlord's clearly a lazy bastard, because the damage to the floor and walls hasn't been repaired. We'll take you there to have a look at a decent hour."

"What did you make of it yourself?" Sherlock persisted.

"Domestic violence of some kind, possibly caused by drugs or alcohol," Donovan said, shrugging her dressing gown tighter around her shoulders. Even up in the cliffs, the sea breeze was icy. "Makes me wonder, though. Forensics already did the works, as much as they could with a new couple's DNA all over the place. I know they pulled up the floorboards and carpet looking for bloodstains and didn't find any."

Donovan had worked in domestic violence before moving on to the murder squad, and an unconscious tendency to jump to that conclusion in the absence of fact.

"Have you been seen in Mousehole?" Sherlock asked her.

"Well, yeah," she said, tones dripping with sarcasm. "What do you think we've been doing all this time?"

"The local residents. Would they recognise you as a detective?"

"The Penzance officers have been doing most of the local interviewing, but probably they would," she said, sounding a little irritated, as if she hadn't thought of this before. "There was a big song and dance routine when the suitcase was found yesterday—seemed like half the village showed up for a gander. I didn't know I was supposed to be here undercover."

"Let's both pray you're now too recognisable to use undercover." Sherlock brushed past Lestrade and hurried up the front steps.

"Why?"

Sherlock turned. "Because," he said, "I haven't been seen yet, and I need to explain why _I'm_ here without revealing I'm part of the investigation team."

"You're _not_ part of the investigation team," Donovan said spikily. "You're a bloody freelancer, Sherlock. What's got into your head now?"

"Logically, the best idea would be that you pretend to be my mistress."

With that, Sherlock continued on up the front steps and into the lobby. Lestrade, glancing back at Donovan as he followed, had never before seen her look so utterly baffled.

* * *

Dr. John Watson had put in barely an hour's work at the hospital—middle ear infection, gastroenteritis, broken arm—when the ward administrator had tapped him on the shoulder and drawn him into one of the consultation rooms to announce that he was now off the clock. Detective Lestrade had requested him and Molly be freed up from work for the next week. After that, there was pretty much no hope of finding Sadie or Maisie alive anyway, John thought with a pang as he scrubbed out.

After a quick phone consultation with Molly, he promised to be home at midday and ready to leave by one p.m. In the meantime, he'd go upstairs and see how Siobhan Frost was doing. Almost as soon as he stepped out of the second-floor elevator into the ICU, he caught sight of Detective Inspector Tobias Gregson standing across the waiting area near the water cooler. At six feet four inches tall, Gregson was difficult to miss.

And he would hardly be hanging around Siobhan's hospital room unless there was something going on. In rising alarm, John now saw that Beryl Holland was sitting on one of the plastic chairs in the corner, whimpering. Chris sat beside her, one arm around her shoulders, and a police woman in uniform was kneeling in front of her and offering her a tissue. No sign anywhere of Adrian. Gregson beckoned John over to him.

"Oh God, did she die?"

"Regaining consciousness," Gregson said. "Not fully there yet—flickers her eyelids, seems to recognise people. Not talking in words, so, and her doctor's just kicked us out of the room."

"I'm not surprised," John said. "So half-conscious, but can't talk. That's… something. Make sure you keep your officers away from her and Adrian, Gregson. I know we need information on why she tried to hang herself and if there's anything else she knows about what happened to Brett and Sadie, but you can't rush it."

"Yeah, I've already heard the lecture from her own doctor," Gregson said sourly. "Anyway, I was going to ring you. Lestrade said you wanted information on who Sadie's neurologist was when she was living in London."

John hadn't been aware that following up on the details of Sadie's epilepsy was now his job, but it made sense. Still, he frowned to himself. What he really needed to do was speak with Sadie's neurologist in _Cornwall_ , whoever that had been.

"Dr. Patricia Crew," Gregson went on. "Rooms in Donnelly Street. You got something to write the address and number down?"

John was still stubbornly what his wife referred to as 'old-fashioned'. It never crossed his mind to enter the information directly into his phone. Instead, he fished into his pocket for the stub pencil he usually carried with him and pulled an old receipt out of his wallet, scrawling the number Gregson read out to him on the back. "Patricia Crew," he muttered to himself.

"What?"

John flinched. Most people said _Sorry?_ Or— his mother's favourite— _I beg your pardon?_ "Nothing," he said, realising he'd been biting on the end of the pencil. "I think I know her. Or I used to, anyway. Might come in handy."

"Okay," Gregson said, as if this was the most pointless thing he'd heard all week. "If you get anywhere with it, let me or Parnell know, right?"

"Right. Thanks, I'll be in touch." John hatched immediate plans to text Greg, asking for Lucy Parnell's direct mobile number. He wasn't going to have any more chit-chats with Gregson if he could help it. Since Gregson didn't seem to be interested in further conversation, he put the scrap of paper back in his pocket. Then, sparing a glance toward the still-sobbing Beryl Holland, he wandered back in the direction of the lifts.

Crew…

It would be a hell of a coincidence if Dr. Patricia Crew was not, in fact, Trish Crew from Kings College, University of London.

Bit more than a friend, though never officially a girlfriend. Not beautiful, but there was something incredibly attractive about her, and it wasn't just that she'd had a mass of red-gold curls that, when she occasionally wore her hair loose, reached halfway down her back. Clever and opinionated. Smelled like cinnamon. Deft, cunning hands.

John had spent New Year's Eve of 1999 at a party at her flat in Shepherd's Bush. He remembered sitting with her on the staircase, passing a bottle of red wine between them. Too drunk to go find some glasses, then, or they couldn't be bothered. Her hair tumbled over her bare shoulders. The music was up way too loud—Lenny Kravitz's 'Fly Away'—so the conversation they'd had about what the hell they were going to do with the rest of their lives was shouted at a distance of two feet. Neither of them had a clue. Trish wasn't particularly interested in neurology, and while John was fairly sure Sandhurst was on his horizon, 9/11 was still almost two years away. Afghanistan was a place he associated with rugs and dogs.

Later on, Trish had taken him into her room for sex, shutting the door and shoving him against it with a strength that almost gave him whiplash. It was as if she were half-feral. She'd shredded his back with her fingernails. He'd pulled at handfuls of her hair. She'd bitten his shoulders and neck hard enough to draw blood. Downstairs, someone was playing The Goo Goo Dolls' 'Iris.'

After that night they'd had sex regularly, on and off for eight months, until she'd started seriously dating another student named Garabed Magarian and John had floated back into dating girls who liked it slightly less rough. He'd lost touch with Trish long before being deployed.

This was going to be an awkward reunion.

* * *

After another hour's sleep in the hotel bed and a hot shower, Lestrade felt almost human as he joined Sherlock and other members of the investigative team in the resort dining room for breakfast. A decent cup of coffee, and he might be able to actually function like a human being.

He'd decided that Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, really must be some kind of robot. It wasn't bloody fair that after being up for twenty-four hours and driving across half the south of England all night, Sherlock could stroll into the dining room looking like he'd walked off the pages of an Oxford Street catalogue. Lestrade made his way over to him.

"Where's McMannis?" Sherlock asked him.

"Good morning to you, too. Not here yet, I don't think." Lestrade scanned the room. It was mainly made up of draft-ins from the Cornwall force, it seemed, though Donovan, Halloran and Dyer were sitting at a table opposite the buffet. It was stacked with enough to feed the entire populace of Mousehole, from stacks of white and wholemeal toast and bright platters of fruit to trays of sizzling bacon and sausages. The Met detectives were already hoeing in as if they were starving.

"I think you've traumatised Donovan." Lestrade looked impish. "What was all that, about pretending she's your mistress?"

"I can think of no other plausible reason for a pair of strangers from London to be in this village in November," Sherlock said smilelessly.

"Why not just tell people you're—yeah, okay," Lestrade conceded. "They won't trust you if they think you're here to interrogate them. Still, you might rethink pretending to be in an actual relationship, Sherlock. Not sure even you could pull that one off."

Sherlock gave him a withering look. For a second, Lestrade wondered if he might even be offended.

"Come on," he said, trying to change the subject. "I'm starving."

They picked at the buffet—Lestrade more so than Sherlock, who restricted himself to toast and coffee, as usual—and went over to sit with the other Met officers. Donovan, with her mouth full, could barely manage a thumbs-up of greeting and Halloran had started briefing Lestrade on the events of the day before when the latter jumped. Someone had just clapped a hand over his shoulder.

"Ah, Detective Lestrade!"

Lestrade dropped his napkin and got to his feet. McMannis, of course. A white-haired, raw-cheeked, cheerful sort of bloke, but one who took a lot of liberties, apparently. Lestrade had never met him before.

"Detective McMannis," he said, unsure of who was deferring to whom. But McMannis offered his hand first.

"Your fame's preceded you, Lestrade," he said.

Greg blinked. _"My_ fame?"

"You were the one who got Justin Flemming, weren't you? The phone call that couldn't have happened."

Lestrade felt a warm flash of appreciation. Justin Flemming had killed his mother, a middle-aged, wealthy widow, in St. Werburgh's in 1999. He'd been Detective Sergeant Lestrade then: married to Julie Clarke, one and three-quarter kids, working out of Bristol CID. According to Flemming, his mother had called him at 2am screaming about their being an intruder in the house. Then, Flemming had said, the line went dead and he immediately called the police. Both parties rushed over to find Mona Flemming had been stabbed to death on her bedroom floor. One back window was found broken, and the house had been ransacked. Justin Flemming's alibi checked out—he'd been with a girlfriend at the time—and apart from his mother's money, he had no known motive. But Lestrade hadn't been satisfied, for all that. Flemming struck him as a slimy, unfeeling bastard, all fake crying and revelling in his bereaved status. Then, when they'd been about to scale back the investigation, Lestrade had had a revelation: If Mona's landline had "gone dead" after calling him from her side, the line would have been open for a few minutes, and it would have been impossible for Justin to have immediately called the police like he'd claimed. From there, it had been a case of convincing Lisa Willard, the girlfriend, that Justin was cheating on her, and that was that. She testified that her initial alibi had been false, and Justin was still serving time in Pentonville.

And he'd done that _without_ Sherlock Holmes's help, thanks very much. He owed Colin McMannis a pint once this was all over.

Embarrassed, he introduced Sherlock. McMannis's memory for old cases was, apparently, near-encyclopedic, and his skill with stroking fragile egoes impressive. After praising several of Sherlock's private cases to the point where even _he_ was embarrassed, McMannis went to get some food, bringing it over and sitting down beside Halloran.

"So," Donovan said. "Parnell called a couple of minutes ago, about alibis."

"And?"

"Neither the Frosts nor the Hollands have one," she said through a mouthful of toast. "In fact, Adrian Frost had last Thursday and Friday off work, which seems pretty dodgy to me, but he saw his GP at eleven-thirty on Thursday morning and got a certificate saying he was sick. No sign of what Sadie or her parents were doing during this time."

"Bank records?"

"Nothing withdrawn outside of London— no cash, no EFT. But that's the thing, isn't it? Nothing at all is a bit dodgy itself. I use my debit card to buy coffee most days. They seem to have withdrawn more money than usual for the past month or so, too. Nothing huge. Twenty quid here and there. But if they were planning to go down to Cornwall and confront Brett and Sadie on the money thing, they might've been smart enough to squirrel away cash so they wouldn't leave a withdrawal trail."

"And if they were planning that far ahead," Lestrade said, "odds are, they weren't planning a nice, friendly chat."

"Yep. They don't own a car, so they had to have come down by train. If we contact-"

"All this is boring," Sherlock suddenly said. "Let's not get bogged down in things like alibis; you're asking the wrong questions and approaching this case from the wrong place. It's not who could have done it. It's who _would_ have done it."

"A number of our suspects have some kind of motive, Mr. Holmes," McMannis said.

Sherlock raised one eyebrow. "I know," he said slowly. "Which is why I _haven't solved the mystery yet."_

"Okay," Lestrade broke in, before this could become a squabble. "Let's take our suspects from the top in terms of motive, then. Brian Crouch?"

Chris Halloran, who had been in charge of following up Brian Crouch's personal history, shook his head. "No evidence he ever saw the Hollands in his life," he said.

"We know he and his team were in the area, poaching for the aquarium," Dyer pointed out. "If the Hollands had caught him, maybe tried to stop him… well, I reckon he could have killed Brett in a panic and then not known what to do with Sadie and the kid. He's not off the hook."

"Bit drastic to go from collecting sea-life illegally to murder," Halloran said.

"Bit drastic to go from anything to murder, really," Lestrade muttered, then stopped himself. Chris Halloran had a bad tendency towards wilting when he was corrected by his superiors. Not likely to be promoted any time soon.

"We know he was there, we know he was there in a boat, and we know he was already doing something dodgy." Dyer reached across for his coffee. "People do stupid things when they panic."

"Plus, he's a sad, angry little wanker," Donovan remarked, stabbing at some bacon with her fork. First he'd called her a bitch, then he'd had the hide to whine to Lestrade that she'd been mean to him? Pathetic. If he _wasn't_ a murderer, she'd decided he was still going down for removing the shark from the wild. She knew people who'd love to string him up for that.

"Jacky and Jimmy Monash can be eliminated," Lestrade went on. "Perfect alibi—we know they were in Kenya. The tech crew are still pulling records, but seems as though all of their emails and phone calls to Brett and Sadie have been normal. Nothing to indicate anything was wrong. If you ask me, we should be centred on Beryl, Chris, Siobhan and Adrian. They've clearly got something on their consciences, and none of them can explain where they were on Friday. If Adrian got a medical certificate on Thursday morning, he could be in Cornwall well in time to murder Brett on Friday morning."

He looked at Sherlock, seeking some approval for his theory. But Sherlock was strangely silent, shoving toast crumbs around his plate with the tip of one finger.

"Why, though?" McMannis asked him. "It's not like _he'd_ let the Monashes borrow any of his money, and he wouldn't benefit much from Brett's death, unless he's left Siobhan a little. It's not common to leave your siblings much if you've got a family of your own, is it?"

"Well, who are _you_ gunning for?"

McMannis considered. "I'd say Derrick Rice," he said. "The problem I have with that, though, is similar to yours, Lestrade. He just doesn't have a motive."

"If he had a thing for Sadie—"

"There's another suspect none of you have even considered," Sherlock broke in, pushing his plate away, as if in disgust. "Not one of you has ever mentioned them, and I find that remarkable."

A short silence. Lestrade and Donovan exchanged a look. "Go on, then," Lestrade said. "Who?"

"Sadie Holland."

* * *

Trish Crew still wasn't beautiful, though she kept herself well. Still had that splended mane of hair, though it was coiled up in a tortoiseshell comb and greying slightly at her temples and along the part-line. She wore a grey wool jumper and skirt, and the fingernails that had once gouged down John's back were trimmed modestly and painted into a French manicure. Discreet makeup and low heels. She looked like a teenager's mother. Very likely, John thought, she was.

"It's good to see you again, John," she said warmly, shutting the door behind them and gesturing him into a chair. She had a thick manila file on the desk, tattered with notes of various ages. On the front, someone had written "Sadie Jacqueline Monash" on it in biro, then crossed out "Monash" and written "Holland" with a black Sharpie. John half-expected Trish to sit on the desk, but she pulled up her office chair and picked up the file. She opened her mouth to begin, then John's left hand caught her eye.

"Oh," she said. "You got married?"

John twisted at his wedding ring. "Yeah," he said, almost embarrassed. Worldwide Watson hadn't won any Most Likely to Get Married awards at university. "Just over two years now."

"Got kids?"

"Three girls," he said, amazed at how easily he'd included the twins.

"Aww, lovely," she said, though she was clearly going through the motions. Probably _not_ mother to a teenager, then. "And you're still in medicine?"

"Yeah, 'course. Over at Hammersmith A&E."

"Shit, John, you're keen," she said, half-groaning. "I wouldn't work in a hospital again if you tripled my pay… but then, you were always chasing an adrenaline rush."

 _So were you._ John decided not to mention his military service. Time and place. A two-year-old and a sick woman were missing.

"I've only been here for twelve years," Trish went on apologetically, all business. "And I haven't seen Sadie Holland in a long time. But I have her file here."

"Who'd she see before you?"

"Dr. Peter Sheppard," she said. "Horrible handwriting. And unfortunately, I can't confer with him about his notes… without using a Ouija board, anyway. He diagnosed Mrs. Holland with Epilepsy with Generalised Tonic-Clonic Seizures when she was twelve."

"That's a normal onset age?"

Trish nodded. "For that type of epilepsy, yes. It can be brought on or exacerbated by puberty, which is probably what happened in Sadie's case. Seizures are triggered mainly by sleep deprivation or alcohol consumption, and the most common time for a seizure is on waking up. No family history, according to Sheppard's notes, but there isn't always."

"But you personally treated Sadie."

"Yes, twice or three times a year from the time she was twenty-five… so she'd be, what, thirty-seven now? She was on lamotrigine when I took over the practice, but in the last eighteen months that she was my patient, she reported three seizures, one of which caused her husband to call an ambulance."

"What happened there?"

She shrugged. "Nothing, from the notes from the University hospital. They went to the A&E, but by the time they actually saw a doctor, Sadie was already recovering. There's not a lot you can do after a seizure's passed, except rest up. Still, it was obvious that the lamotrigine wasn't working for her anymore, so I changed her over to sodium valproate— Epilim's the brand name. She reported no more issues after that time."

"Okay. And she was on what dose…?"

"600mg a day, to begin with," she said, reading from her notes. "But by the last time I gave her a prescription, it was a lot lower. One 200mg tablet every three days."

John breathed a sigh of relief. Assuming Sadie had taken her medication on Thursday or Friday morning, she'd only missed one or two doses, not five.

"Just a standard check-up, that one," Trish went on. "She reported no recent seizures, and I gave her a three-month prescription. Nothing in my notes indicating she was thinking of moving away, or that she asked to be referred to a neurologist closer to Penzance."

"When was it?" he asked. "Her last appointment with you, I mean."

"February 17th, 2014."

At this, John paused. "You're sure?"

"Definite," Trish said. John saw a flash of anger in her eyes, something of the girl who'd literally drawn blood. "My notes wouldn't be out of whack like that. Why?"

"Because," John said slowly, still running calculations in his head, "Sadie gave birth in October of 2014. Assuming she carried to term, she would have been between, say, two and six weeks pregnant the day you gave her that prescription. She didn't say anything about it?"

Trish frowned deeply. "No," she said.

"Sure?"

"Positive." Trish shut the file with a _thump,_ then flicked through it with her hands, reminding John of a bristling cat. "There is no way in hell I'd prescribe Epilim for a woman who was pregnant, John," she said. "Birth defects while using it can run to nearly 40%. It's more dangerous than Thalidomide."


	10. Coupling

"You don't _seriously_ think Sadie Holland is responsible," Lestrade said for the fifteenth time as he, McMannis, Dyer and Sherlock got out of the car. The streets in Mousehole were so narrow and winding that he'd been forced to park it half up on the kerb behind a row of shops, leaving them to walk the short distance up the hill toward Brett and Sadie's old home.

"It's a hypothesis," Sherlock said snippily, shoving his hands in his pockets. The day had fined up into scattered clouds and bursts of late-autumn sunshine, but even his coat and scarf couldn't contend against the freezing wind. "And one you never thought of, because you were so in love with the idea of Sadie being the damsel in distress. Donovan said you found damage to the Hollands' home that looked as if it were the marks of domestic violence. We need to follow that up."

"I s'pose if Brett was abusive, Sadie could have just upped and snapped one day," McMannis said. "And then panicked 'cause she never meant to kill anyone-"

"Or Brett mightn't have been abusive at all," Dyer interjected. _"Sadie_ could be a raging psycho who killed him on purpose and buggered off because she didn't want to do time."

Sherlock cast him a grateful glance.

"That's an awful thing to say about a missing woman," McMannis said.

"And there is our problem," Sherlock said. "We're never going to get anywhere unless you think of her like anyone else involved: a suspect. This is the right house."

Before unceremoniously leaving, the Hollands had lived in a tiny two-up, two-down semi in Southview Terrace. A beautiful cottage, all grey stone and white painted window frames, with a row of peonies on the windowsill (clearly fake, Sherlock observed with a little snort of superiority. Their colour was too vivid, their petals too perfect; besides, they were distinctly out-of-season). An added sunroom sheltered the front door from the bracing winds off the ocean. In it, they could see a ginger cat stretched out luxuriously on a battered brown sofa. It jumped two feet in the air when Lestrade knocked at the door. A plump, blonde woman in her late twenties answered it, holding a crumpled dish towel in one hand.

"Oh." She switched the dish towel to her left hand and held her right out to shake Lestrade's. "Sorry, I completely forgot the time. Beth Tuckness."

Lestrade introduced himself, then McMannis, Sherlock and Dyer.

"It's terrible what happened to those poor people," she said, her pink-and-white face crumpled in concern. "Have they found the woman and her little girl yet?"

"Not yet," Lestrade said. "But we're working round the clock to find them. Anything you can show us from when you moved in would be really helpful, Mrs. Tuckness."

"Well, come through," she said, waving them all in and shutting the door behind Dyer. "Not you," she said to the cat. "Stupid boy, he knows he's not allowed in when I've got Callum on the floor."

Callum was, apparently, her baby son: a roly-poly, red-faced, spittle-cheeked specimen of seven months. He was on a play-rug in the middle of the living room floor, and the adults in the room had to practically step over him to get past. The cottage was beautiful, but miniscule, almost as if it were a scale model of a real house.

"Not much to see," Beth said apologetically. "But in here…"

She led them to the kitchen, just off the living room and giving onto the front windows where the peonies were displayed. She pointed to the stone floor. "That."

Sherlock got down on his knees to have a closer look at the crack running along one of the stone tiles, ending in chip the size of a man's thumbnail, displaying the lighter, rougher stone beneath. They were all silent for a minute or two while he looked.

"Dropped something," he finally said, getting to his feet. He looked very close to disappointed. "Nothing sinister, I wouldn't think. A crock-pot or a meat tenderizer, perhaps. The floor is sandstone. Sandstone is fragile. Show me the damage to the walls."

The damage to the walls, Beth explained in faintly embarrassed tones, was in the bedroom upstairs. She led them up a winding staircase set at a breakneck steepness until they were all in her bedroom, a small room painted a nauseating shade of apricot, and with a blue bedspread that was so jarring it was obvious that whoever had painted the walls, she hadn't. Directly opposite her bed was an ensuite doorway. It was obvious that it had all been one larger room at one time, and the ensuite had been created later. The wall between them was little more than flimsy gyprock. In it was a hole, deep and almost clearly-defined at its borders. Sherlock examined it, running his fingertips along its edge. Then he turned to Beth.

"We're about to discuss a sensitive kidnapping case," he said. "Get out."

"I beg your _pardon?"_

"Thanks so much for letting us do this, Mrs. Tuckness," Lestrade said, instantly his most charming. "I'm wondering, could you please leave us up here for a minute or two?"

With a miffed glance at Sherlock, Beth swiped at the hair pulled behind her ears and left. Sherlock waited until they could hear her footsteps on the floorboards below until he said, "Dyer, here. How tall are you?"

"Six foot, half an inch," Dyer said.

"Excellent. Stand there." Sherlock positioned Dyer so roughly against the hole that is was more of a push than a nudge. Then he beckoned to McMannis. "You, McMannis?" he asked. "How tall are you?"

"Five ten."

"Excellent. Over here…" He pulled at McMannis's arm. "As you can see…" He pointed. "The hole is virtually head-height for Dyer, who is half an inch shorter than Brett Holland. Now if McMannis took a swing at him, he'd have to reach in a most unnatural way to reach his head, which seems unlikely."

"So what if their positions were reversed?" Lestrade asked. "Dyer trying to punch McMannis?"

Sherlock repositioned the two men. He pulled McMannis's arm out as if he were a puppet and demonstrated. "A straight swing lands too high," he said. "He'd have missed by quite a lot."

"Okay, so what happened, then?"

"Someone punched the wall," Sherlock said. "The shape of the hole is quite distinctive. But Brett wasn't punching Sadie, and Sadie most definitely wasn't punching Brett."

* * *

John was home, packed, and ready at the promised time; Molly took the keys to fetch the car while he gathered up the last of Charlie's things. As she idled on the kerb and he hauled things into the back seat, he realised that he'd packed as much for Charlie has he had for himself and Molly put together. Charlie, predictably, started whining as he was clipping her into her car seat. She was not a fan of the car at the best of times, and had never been on a five-hour drive. With four planned stops, the trip was probably going to take seven hours.

Molly turned on talkback radio before they were out of Central London, since it seemed to have a better effect on Charlie than music. John drew out his pencil and the scrap of paper he'd written Trish's contact details on and started calculating various dates. Mostly in February and October, Molly saw, surreptitiously glancing at the paper while they were stopped at a roundabout waiting for right of way.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Nothing," he mumbled. Then, remembering a promise not to dismiss his wife with 'nothing', he said, "Molly, if you were two weeks pregnant, would you know?"

"I… er, what?"

"I spoke to Sadie's neurologist this morning," he said, trying not to mumble his words into his collar. Details of exactly how he knew Sadie's neurologist could wait. "She said she last prescribed Epilim for Sadie in February of 2014. Even assuming Maisie was born at 37 weeks, she still would have been two weeks pregnant the day she got that prescription. I'm trying to figure out if she knew."

"Well, that's the wrong question," Molly said promptly.

"… Is it? Why?"

Molly paused to check her shoulder and changed lanes. "Remember," she said, "when we arrived in Rome on our honeymoon, and I had that shocking headache?"

"Yeah," John said, even though of all the memories he had of his honeymoon, Molly's headache was not one of them.

"I would have been about two weeks pregnant with Charlie," she said. "And we were already wondering… we were talking about it on the train, remember?"

That he _did_ remember.

"And I said I didn't want to spoil things by testing so early because who knew what kind of test we'd buy in a foreign country where neither of us spoke Italian, and the cheaper tests throw false positives all the time. So if the question is 'did Sadie know she was pregnant', well, she could have. But anyway, so I had a bad headache, I felt terrible. You gave me a couple of aspirin tablets on the train—and John, I never told you this before, but I said 'thank you', took them to the dining car to get a bottle of water, and I… on the way back, I dropped them in the ladies' toilet."

"Did you? Why?"

"Because all I could think was, I didn't want them to hurt my baby."

John looked indignant. "I would never-"

"Exactly, John! We're both doctors, you knew I could be pregnant, you gave me something both of us knew would be completely harmless if I was—and I still couldn't bring myself to take them, just in case! And Charlie was… not really planned… well, we weren't intending to have her so soon. If I'd been _trying_ to have a baby for fifteen years, and somebody changed my medication, I'd have been asking about it, Googling it, finding out everything I could about whether it was going to hurt my baby if I was pregnant."

"And Sadie didn't do that."

"If she had, she would have found out how bad Epilim could be."

"So what are you saying?"

"She wasn't pregnant," Molly said. "And she knew she wasn't. She wasn't trying."

"Wasn't trying? She was doing IVF."

"Yes, but _was_ she for all that time? I mean, I…" Molly blushed and suddenly pursed her lips. "Er. Never mind."

John smiled. "You've got to tell me now, Lolly," he said. "Come on, it might be important to help Sadie and Maisie."

Molly, still as red as fire, took a breath and fortified herself. "All right," she said. "When I turned thirty, which is before I met you…"

"I know."

"I actually looked into IVF. I wanted a baby and I… didn't have a boyfriend… well, I looked into it. And, um."

"Um?"

"Nobody does IVF for fifteen years, John. It's expensive, it's upsetting… I spoke to women who said it took over their lives and wrecked their marriages. And if it hadn't worked for a few years, you'd get reproductive counselling pretty much telling you to give up for the sake of your sanity."

Both of them heard a tinny jingle as Charlie dropped her toy elephant onto the floor of the car. Automatically, John reached into the back seat to retrieve it before she could fuss.

"Say please?" he coaxed.

Molly smiled. "She's too little, John."

"That's what she wants you to think." John surrendered the elephant, and Charlie grabbed at it and then gleefully shoved it in her mouth. "Okay," he said. "I don't understand."

"They gave up, John. Sadie and Brett. If you look up when exactly they went through those IVF rounds, I think you'll find they weren't having any close to the time Maisie was conceived."

"So Maisie was just, what, a… miracle?"

"Maybe," Molly said thoughtfully. "Maybe she's adopted."

* * *

"Why do we have to pretend we're fucking?" Donovan complained.

She was sitting in the passenger seat of Lestrade's car, which was parked outside of the local fish and chip shop on the promenade. It was now after dark, and they had been sitting there in the shadows for a minute or two, with Lestrade in the back seat, discussing Sherlock's plan to gather local information on the Hollands.

At her choice of words, Sherlock visibly flinched. "I told you," he said long-sufferingly. "Our having some sort of clandestine love affair is the only believable reason we would be in a tiny village in Cornwall, in November, where there also happens to be a murder investigation going on."

"You know I'm going to have to out myself as a detective eventually."

"Yes, that won't matter, as long as we get the information we need beforehand."

Donovan pursed her lips. On the one hand, she'd sooner eat broken glass than pretend to be Sherlock Holmes's girlfriend. On the other… there was a sick woman and a toddler missing, and they might still be alive. And Sherlock's plan might have been unnecessarily complicated—but it might also just work. A lot of the crazy things he did worked. It was why Lestrade let him do them. "Why don't you go in there with Lestrade and pretend to be his _boyfriend?"_ she demanded, turning to point a finger at him.

"Oy," Lestrade said. "Do you want to go back to working traffic for the rest of your life?"

"Look." Sherlock sighed. "It really is incredibly simple. We go in there, order some fish and chips, and act vaguely affectionate toward one another. Enough to satisfy bystanders that we're having an affair and we don't want your husband to find out, so we've chosen this out-of-the-way spot as a love nest. It's plausible enough. The place must have had other couples here for the same reason; it's picturesque and right on the water."

Donovan narrowed her eyes. "What, exactly, is 'vaguely affectionate'?" she demanded.

"And for God's sake, don't call me Sherlock," he said, as if he hadn't heard her question. "So far as I'm aware, I'm the only Sherlock in the world. I don't want anyone wondering about the name and Googling it, which will instantly bring up a picture of me and identify me as a private detective. I'll casually ask some questions; you play along. We get our food. We leave. Does that sound difficult to you?"

"No."

"Then let's go."

"No." Donovan crossed her arms. "You can go in and pretend to be whoever you like, Sherlock, I'm—hey!"

Sherlock had got out of the car, crossed to the passenger side, opened it, and was dragging her out by one hand. He pulled; she pulled back. Being slightly stronger, he'd just managed to drag her out of the car and under the light of a street-lamp when a pair of men on the other side of the street saw them.

"Oi," one called, stopping. "Everything all right over there?"

"Yes, sorry, we're only playing," Donovan called back, smiling. Then, through her teeth, "I hate you, Sherlock."

"Good for you," he said, leading her by the hand more easily now. The two men were still watching them. "Play along, and you can hate me all you like."

The shop door jangled as Sherlock opened it and stepped intrepidly in, still with Donovan by the hand. There were no other customers, as well they might expect at a cold and dreary time of year. It was a surprise the place bothered to trade. A single worker stood on duty; a stout, middle-aged woman with a greasy face and stubby, wrinkled hands. Lamentably, she did not seem to be the chatty type.

Both Sherlock and Donovan looked up at the menu board for long enough for their faces to be clearly seen on the CCTV camera bolted to the wall, then Sherlock stepped forward and ordered—in an accent more like Lestrade's than his own. Donovan blinked, then remembered in time that she was being watched. As Sherlock stepped back, she linked her arm in his and—inwardly seething, outwardly smiling—nuzzled closer to him, taking great pains that her wedding ring could be seen. The woman behind the counter, having nothing much to do while the fryer did the work for her, started wiping down already-pristine benchtops.

"I saw two police cars parked on the promenade, lights going and everything," Sherlock said at length. "Someone get killed?" The question came out as a nervous joke.

"Oh, you didn't hear?" The woman pushed back one greasy strand of greying hair. "Murder, yes. A couple out on a boat, and their little one. They found the man in a suitcase, all chopped to bits."

Sherlock whistled. "Well, we've only just got in now," he explained. "Hadn't heard. That's horrible. Did you know them?"

The woman shrugged, turning back to the deep fryer to check on the contents. "They came in to the shop every now and again," she said. "She did, anyway, pushing the little one in her pram. Poor souls."

"He wasn't a fan, then?" Donovan said lightly. "Health freak?"

She snorted. "Drank, or so I heard," she said. "Mrs. Cardy—she lived next door to 'em—she said they got up some fearful rows. The whole street could hear."

"She have bruises, then, when she came in?" Donovan persisted.

Sherlock shot her a warning glance, then reached out and brushed a tendril of hair off her forehead and kissed her nose. After a second's pause, she laughed and drew closer, shoving her hand in his pocket.

"Not that I ever saw," the woman said with a shrug. "Hey, you two, this is a shop, not a kissing booth. On your honeymoon, then?"

"Um… yes," Sherlock mumbled. Perfect: it sounded like a lie, because it was one, though not in the way the nosy locals might think.

"From London?"

Donovan nodded, suddenly looking sheepish. She drew Sherlock's left hand up over her hip, where it was highly visible.

"But we don't have definite plans," Sherlock said. "Can you recommend anywhere to stay?"

"The Ship Inn," she said immediately. "Further up on the promenade. My cousin Judith runs it. Tell her Rosen recommended it; she may be able to do you a good deal at this time of year." She turned back to the fryer to retrieve the oily mass of fish and chips, salt it and wrap it in paper. Popping it into a plastic carry-bag, she said, "All right, that's a large chips and two bits of battered cod - £11.35, thanks."

Donovan drew her hand out of Sherlock's pocket to pat her own. "Shit," she muttered. Then, in a whine, "Billy, I've only gone and left my purse in the car…"

With a wry smile at Rosen, Sherlock drew his own wallet out of his coat pocket. "I swear, my wife thinks I'm made of money!" he said, handing a couple of notes over.

"Very likely she does," Rosen said, narrowing her eyes slightly. "But Blind Freddy could see this one's not your wife."

Sherlock blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Married couples don't carry on like you two do. Now, look, I'm open-minded," Rosen went on, holding her hands up. "But not everybody is. Tone it down a bit, is all I'm saying. Tell Judith you're on your honeymoon." She held out a handful of change, and after a pause, Sherlock took it, putting it in his wallet and mumbling thanks.

"You two have a good night," Rosen called after them as Sherlock pulled the door closed after them.

"What the hell did you call me?" he demanded as soon as he'd shut the car door behind them. Uninterested in the food they'd bought, he passed it over the back seat to Lestrade.

"Billy."

"Oh, I'm sorry. When I said 'don't call me Sherlock', I should have specified 'don't call me anything stupid'." Sherlock stopped. "Wait. Who's _Billy?"_

"My little bruv, actually," Donovan said. "And you're just lucky I didn't call you the name on the tip of my tongue, which was 'Rahul'. Anyway, what the hell were _you_ doing, kissing me on the nose?"

"I thought it a much more hygienic token of affection than kissing you on the mouth. Should I have done that instead?"

"Only if you wanted to lose teeth… shut up, boss, or I'll go tell Chambers you've both been sexually harassing me."

In the back seat, Lestrade was laughing so hard he was crying.

"Yes, shut up," Sherlock said to him without malice. "Well, Sally…" He turned the key in the ignition and reached over to turn the headlights on. "Time for you and I to check in at the Ship Inn."

"… What?!"

"You heard our helpful guide. She's going to tell everyone she knows that there's a shameless couple in town having an affair, and she recommended us to the Ship Inn. If we don't check in, she'll know something is wrong. We already dodged a bullet: she recalled that a suitcase had been found, but not that you'd been there as a detective."

"I'm not sharing a bloody hotel room with you!"

"Oh, will you relax? I'll sleep on the floor."


	11. Rice

Lestrade returned to the Lamorna Cove headquarters alone, pulling his car up behind John and Molly's just as they arrived. Both the Watsons looked so tired and harassed as they got out of the car that Jake Dyer immediately took Charlie off Molly's hands, figuratively and literally.

"Come on," he said, hoisting Charlie in a way that reminded Lestrade that Jake's skills with children were something he might be able to use, should the need came up. "I'll show you your room, Molly. I s'pose she's grizzling 'cause she's hungry. Did you stop for dinner on the way? Decent food, here, I've got to say…"

John watched them go up the steps and through the glass lobby doors, a little distractedly. It was only when Dyer was out of earshot that he finally asked, "Where's Sherlock?"

"I left him at the Ship Inn, with Donovan… long story, John, and the best one you'll hear all year." Lestrade grinned in spite of himself. "Something I can help with…?"

"Have you seen Maisie Holland's birth certificate?"

He blinked. "Yeah, probably," he said. "Copies of all our victims' birth certificates are part of the case files, where they exist. I'd have noticed if Maisie's had been missing. Why?"

"Would you have noticed if there'd been anything weird about it?"

"If you mean," Lestrade said, "did I notice there were any blank spots or Maisie's parents being listed as anything other than Brett and Sadie, no, I didn't. And if I hadn't noticed that, I'm bloody sure Sherlock would have pointed it out."

Now he came to think of it, John was bloody sure Sherlock would have pointed it out, too…

No. Molly had been sure. And now he was possibly veering into the unenviable position of believing Molly or believing Sherlock Holmes.

"It's just," he said. "Molly and I were talking about it on the way up. Long story short, there's a big chance Maisie isn't Sadie and Brett's biological child."

This derailed Lestrade for roughly one second. "So she's adopted?"

"Molly seems to think she might be. But you'd have noticed that, right? Her adoptive parents' names wouldn't be on her birth certificate."

Lestrade considered this for a few seconds, then drew his phone out of his pocket. "I'll get Gregson to text through a copy," he muttered, "and get someone up in London to have another look at the original. I don't think anyone here would be able to tell just from a scan or a photo whether it's a fake or something."

"But I really don't get this," John said, narrowly avoiding a petulant, _and I was kind of hoping Sherlock would be here to explain it._ "If they couldn't have their own baby, and adopted one, why lie? People adopt all the time."

"You'd be surprised about all the stupid things people lie about, John."

"No, I wouldn't," John said. "Working in Accident and Emergency, you should see the creative excuses people have for 'how that got there'."

Lestrade winced. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

"No, you really don't," John agreed. "Speaking of, who was Sadie's doctor in Cornwall?"

"Which one?"

"Exactly. We're looking for a GP, a neurologist, and an ob-gyn. The last I guess I could track down through the hospital where Maisie was born… assuming she was born in one."

"The GP is a Dr. Givan… Jonathan, I think his name is. The Cornish officers pulled records before we even got here and did an interview with him."

"Did you look at it?"

"Yeah, but I was looking for whether he'd said anything that might hint at Maisie or Sadie being abused."

"Did he?"

"Nah. No hint that Sadie was depressed, either; that her marriage was in trouble or she was thinking of suicide or of hurting anybody. She did mention being stressed a couple of times, but a woman with a young kid and no family around except Brett—well, neither he nor the interviewing officer thought that was anything unusual. Wasn't on any other medication, other than the Epilim. Neither was Brett or Maisie, from memory. Maisie's fully vaccinated and hasn't been in for anything more than the usual kid dramas—a couple of coughs and colds..."

Both of them turned as Inspector McMannis opened the front lobby door and made his way down the steps to them. He looked slightly agitated, checking over his shoulder, as if worried he'd been followed outside.

"Inspector McMannis," Lestrade said, taking a step back and gesturing to John. "This is Dr. John Watson, Sherlock's colleague. John, DI McMannis is in charge of the investigation here in Cornwall."

McMannis paused to shake John's hand politely; then he turned to Lestrade and demanded, "Why's there a kid here?"

Through the closed glass doors of the lobby, both of them could hear Charlie's thin wails, interspersed with both Molly and Jake trying to calm her down.

"Ah. Yeah. Um, that'd be mine," John explained ruefully. "No living grandparents, and the usual babysitters weren't on hand. Sorry."

"And her mother's Dr. Hooper, the one I was telling you about." Lestrade put in. "Brilliant pathologist. The Met uses her all the time, and Sherlock uses her skills on private cases. Look, Colin, she's okay. Really. Adapts well. She might even be useful to us—she once solved a case for us by being born."

"Oh, don't let Sherlock hear you say that," John said. _"He_ solves all the cases, remember?"

Lestrade was about to make another bid for Charlie when McMannis's phone rang. He held up one hand apologetically and pulled it out of his trouser pocket with the other, wandering away a few paces for privacy. By now Charlie had subsided, and the only sounds from inside the resort was a hum of faint activity coming from the makeshift incident room, where both Met and Cornwall officers were manning the tip line and collaborating data. Above the resort, the wind had picked up and was whistling through leaf and branch, cliff and crag.

"He seems nice," John said. "I was expected a lot worse from him for showing up with the Human Megaphone. So come on—what's Sherlock doing that's so bloody hilarious?"

"Pretending to be Donovan's boyfriend, would you believe?"

"… Really?" John stared. "And, um, how's that going for him?"

"We're about to go and check out Derrick Rice's place together, so you can ask him yourself. I'm not really expecting to pick them both up alive, if I'm honest-"

"No," McMannis suddenly barked, shoving a finger in his free ear and pacing toward the courtyard's boundary fence. He turned and made eye contact with Lestrade for a second. "Under no circumstances are you to let him in… I don't care. Get an officer to go for him… I'd prefer it if you didn't even do that, but it's not our primary crime scene and he's only a suspect at the—right. I'll contact Sherlock Holmes, send him and Lestrade and a few of the others down to you. In the meantime, keep him off."

He hung up and looked despairingly at his mobile phone, deep in thought, until Lestrade interrupted him. "What was that?"

"Derrick Rice has just shown up back in town," McMannis said. "Wants in to his place, where he could well want to clean up after himself or destroy evidence."

"Did anyone, you know, ask him to come back?" Lestrade asked.

"Not that I've heard of. I certainly didn't ask him to."

"Well, what's he playing at, then?"

John thought. "You've probably heard, but there's been a bit of fuss back in London— they think Siobhan's coming to. Can't talk yet, and Gregson's on it. But he said in his interview that he was close to Brett's parents, and they're still with Siobhan. Bit strange that he'd choose now, of all times, to come back home. I'd love to know what Sherlock thinks of all this."

* * *

As it happened, when Lestrade and John picked up Sherlock and Donovan in the shadowy car-park behind the Ship Inn, neither of them were conversationally inclined. Donovan folded her arms petulantly and slid to the furthest extremity of her side of the back seat, and Sherlock seemed lost in thought and oblivious to everyone else in the car. By the time they turned into Cliff Lane and pulled the car up outside the little white house Derrick Rice had owned for only a fortnight it was to find a pair of uniformed PCs standing in the front yard having a heated exchange with the man himself.

"What's going on?" Lestrade asked as they got out of the car strolled over. He sounded casual, but both Donovan and Dyer knew that Derrick Rice was already walking a fine line.

"Oh, you're here," Derrick said ungraciously. "Is this the way you do things, now, not let people into their own houses?"

"While there's an investigation underway into a murdered man and two missing people, yes," Lestrade said. "Sorry, but you're going to have to find somewhere else to watch telly—or, God help us, you could actually go down to the bay and start searching along the waterline, like everyone else in the village is."

Derrick gave a great, heaving sigh, as though he were trying to calm himself from an outburst. "I haven't even got a change of clothes," he complained.

"We'll get you one from inside, if you want to wait a bit. Anything else you need?"

Derrick mumbled a request for a toothbrush, and Lestrade gave orders to one of the constables to find him accommodation at the Old Coastguard, since it was a decent distance from where Sherlock and Donovan were 'undercover' at the Ship Inn.

"You guys go in; I'll be right there," he said to Sherlock and the others, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of the top pocket of his jacket. "It's just, I haven't had one all day. Smoke, Derrick?"

"What's all that about?" John asked as they filed in the door and Donovan shut it behind them. He peeped out of the front curtains at Lestrade and Rice, smoking on the footpath. "Last I saw Derrick Rice, he threatened to kill you, Sherlock, for daring suggest he'd ever do anything to hurt Sadie. Beside himself with grief. Now he's complaining about not having a toothbrush?"

"Bit suspicious, isn't it," Donovan said.

"Plenty of people would be pissed off at being chucked out of their own house, without even a change of underwear," Dyer, who was still firmly gunning for Brian Couch as his culprit, pointed out. He looked around at the little 'front room' they were standing in-a cramped, low-eaved arrangement with small, square windows and whitewashed walls. "Right, so what are we looking for, apart from a change of clothes for our friend out there?"

"The estate agents said the Hollands moved out of their place six or seven weeks ago," Donovan said. "And you said, Genius, that if they'd been living on the _Marie Celeste_ all that time, you'd know. We've made enquiries—no evidence they were staying at any of the resorts in Mousehole, and anyway, it wouldn't make sense if they moved out of their house because of money issues and then spent it on a hotel room. So they had to have stayed somewhere."

"But wait," John said. "Derrick said he'd only been living in Mousehole for two weeks. So there's still, what, four or five weeks…"

"Not exactly." Sherlock got down on his heels to inspect the dust on Rice's television unit, sweeping it up on the tip of one finger. "I don't believe Brett and Sadie were in Mousehole, homeless, for those weeks we can't account for. They moved back to London—and in with Derrick Rice. John, you remember Siobhan saying she'd last seen Brett and Sadie when she came down here for Maisie's birthday last month?"

"Yeah."

"No. I believe she _did_ visit for Maisie's birthday—in London. And Adrian didn't visit with her, nor her parents, because Siobhan was the only one of Brett's family who knew that the Hollands had come back. Chris and Beryl were already chasing them for money. They'd hardly be likely to announce they were in town. But Siobhan—nice woman, dedicated aunt. She could be trusted with the secret."

"And then, so, they all go back down to Cornwall, and Derrick gets this place, and then Brett and Sadie stay here with him?"

"So it would seem." Sherlock pointed to one of the blue fabric seats of the sofa. "That's been turned over recently," he said, stepping over to it. "The forensic team would never have turned it over and left it like that—they know to put things exactly how they found them." He turned it over himself. "Yes, look." He pointed. "Traces of where a soggy biscuit has been ground into the fabric. They've tried to clean it, failed, and turned the cushion over to hide the stain. Do you know any adults who play with their food?"

"Yes," John muttered, glancing up at the ceiling.

"What's this about biscuits?" Lestrade, now smelling strongly of cigarette smoke, had let himself into the house and joined them in the doorway between the living room and kitchen.

Sherlock, after a deep sigh, condescended to explain again. "Did you get Derrick's DNA?" he asked.

" 'Course I did." Lestrade patted his pocket. "Either he's stupid enough to not realise we can get it from a cigarette butt, or he doesn't care. So you reckon he was hiding the Hollands from their, um, creditors?"

"The evidence is all over the room, if you care to observe it," Sherlock said, getting to his feet. "Aside from some telling stains, there are coasters set out on the coffee table, and three of the sofa seats have been regularly sat on in the last few weeks. The depression in the foam and slight wear on the leather is quite distinctive."

"Maybe he just had visitors," Donovan said.

"No. The _same_ three seats, indicating that whoever sat there was in a regular habit of it. Besides, he doesn't know anyone in Mousehole, according to him. Not well enough that he'd invite them in to his house, lay out coasters, and let them claim their personal preference in sofa seat." Sherlock dusted his hands. "I need to see upstairs."

Derrick's bedroom door was directly opposite the top of the stairs, and it was closed. Sherlock opened the door carefully, as if he was expecting to be attacked. But the bedroom was empty, save a large pine-framed bed, stripped down to the mattress, two bedside tables and a low dresser. Above it, a large wedding photograph took pride of place on the wall. Brett and Sadie Holland. Much younger—Brett's hair had been darker then, and Sadie's had been blonde. They had been posed with Brett nuzzled into Sadie's neck, his face almost obscured. He dipped her toward the camera, romance-movie style, and she smiled into the lens with a cat-that-got-the-cream expression: a tall woman, too heavy for current fashion, and, arguably, too heavy for the bargain-rack, halter-neck white dress she wore. Her hair was swept up in unnatural, solid-looking curls, pinned and sprayed and defying gravity, while her veil dangled almost to the ground.

"Lestrade," Sherlock said, "how often have you been someone's best man?"

"Twice… wait, three times," Lestrade said, momentarily forgetting standing up for a mate from school—a shotgun wedding at the Bristol Register Office when all parties involved were nineteen. "Why?"

"And did you put photos of the happy couple up in your house?"

Lestrade paused. "… Yeah, that's a bit weird," he said. "You think Rice was overstepping his bounds a bit?"

"Judge for yourself." Sherlock gestured to the photograph. "Note, too, that it's not a particularly clear picture of Brett, but it's a good one of Sadie."

"So what are you saying?"

Sherlock shook his head. "It's not enough," he muttered to himself. Then, more loudly, "It's not enough that he might have photos of Sadie—quite natural; they're friends, after all—somewhere in his house for him to look at. This is a framed wedding photograph on his bedroom wall."

"I wonder how Sadie felt about that," Donovan muttered. "I'd be giving the creep a wide berth if it were me. Positioned right where he can get _comfortable_ with it."

"No, this isn't about masturbation," Sherlock said. "At least, not entirely about masturbation. He could keep photos for that purpose in his bedside drawer. This is a very carefully chosen photograph—Sadie looking directly into the eyes of the viewer, Brett so obscured and out of focus that any man viewing this could stand himself in Brett's place. A fantasy of being _married_ to Sadie."

"A fantasy that he's Brett. His childhood best mate." Lestrade pondered this. "That he's… Maisie's father? He lost it when you suggested he'd ever hurt Sadie, but you were including Maisie in that."

Sherlock shook his head. "He's never asked about Maisie's welfare," he said. "And it was Adrian who bothered to tell us Maisie was conceived by IVF, not Rice. He'd have mentioned it if he had particular interest in Sadie's child." He scrutinised the picture for a few seconds more, then snapped out of his reverie. "This is going to take forever if we don't split up," he said. "Dyer, you may as well get Rice's things. Donovan, you and I search up here. Lestrade, John, try the kitchen."

"So glad you're running this investigation for me," Lestrade said as they all moved out into the hall, with the exception of Dyer, who began rifling through drawers in the dresser. Donovan moved onto the bathroom and Lestrade headed back down the stairs, but John grabbed at Sherlock's sleeve.

"Okay, Sherlock, out with it," he said, with a deprecatory glance at Donovan to check she either couldn't hear or wasn't paying attention. "What are you and Donovan up to?"

"Not as much as Mousehole thinks we're up to, I assure you."

"No, but seriously—"

"Seriously." There was no mischief in Sherlock's grey eyes. "To find out the truth, one sometimes needs to obfuscate. And make sacrifices."

"Well, what am I even doing here?"

"I'll need you tomorrow. Early."

John seemed on the verge of saying something else when, from downstairs, he heard Lestrade call his name. Looking slightly put-upon, he trudged down the stairs and over to where Lestrade was standing at the kitchen sink.

"What's wrong?"

"That woman," Lestrade said, peeping through the shutters.

John did the same. In the house opposite, only fifteen or twenty feet away, was a deep-eaved window that matched Rice's almost exactly. Amber light spilled out from open Venetian blinds, and between them, John caught glimpses of a white-haired, wizened little woman fussing around at her own sink.

"Trying to be subtle about it, but she's been washing the dishes ever since I left Derrick outside, having a grand old snoop," Lestrade said. "Bloody little old ladies."

"We used to have one who lived across the street when we were kids," John said, wondering whether Veronica Cartwright and her pride of half-feral cats were still alive and well in Great Leighs. "Knew everything about everyone. Knew Harry was gay before _Harry_ did."

Lestrade nodded. "Pain in the arse to live next door to, but they can be a godsend for an investigation," he said. "Sherlock's supposed to be lying low—not sure he thought that one through, but it's keeping me entertained. Want to come over with me and see if the old bat knows anything?"

* * *

Lestrade's instincts had been on the money. Rose Tully seemed at least a hundred years old; a garrulous, harmless and probably lonely old soul who'd been widowed during the Thatcher administration and lived alone since. Judging from the pictures occupying every spare space of wall and almost every surface of her front living room, she knew a lot of people and kept tabs on them. On letting them into the house, she immediately rushed to the kitchen to fetch tea and toast. Lestrade had left the fateful packet of fish and chips with Sherlock and Donovan at the inn and John hadn't eaten since he left London, so neither of them complained. It was only when she'd brought in a pot of tea, a stack of buttered toast and a pot of marmalade to the table that Lestrade cleared his throat and began.

"So I s'pose you've heard about Brett and Sadie Holland, and their little girl," he said, taking a gulp of his tea. Beside him, John was too busy with the toast for coherent conversation. "They were good friends of Derrick Rice. Did you see them next door much?"

"Oh, all the time," Rose said. "The little one screamed a lot."

"Screamed?"

"Oh, bless, I just meant she screamed in the way all children that age do. I had four of my own, and they used to stand out in the middle of the yard and hold competitions to see which one of them could scream the loudest."

"Bet that went down well with the neighbours," John remarked.

"Well, there were always the sort who'd complain about that, but mostly, in those days we understood that children are children, and we let them be," Rose said. "There wasn't all this business with not letting children play in their own yard without watching them."

"I remember," Lestrade said. "In the summer, my mum used to chuck me out of doors after breakfast, and heaven help me if I came back before dark.'

"Disgraceful. Melissa Bancock on the corner, she doesn't even let hers out in the front yard on their own. I told her it wasn't healthy for a boy of eight to be able to, you know, be a boy. She said people call the police on people who let their children play out-of-doors on their own nowadays." She fixed Lestrade with a stern, rheumy eye.

"Nothing to do with me," Lestrade said, injecting a bit of boyish charm into the words. The last thing he needed was a diversion into what Melissa Bancock did or didn't do with her children. "So they were a happy lot next door, then? No parties, no rows?"

Rose shrugged. "No parties. I was a bit nervous when he moved in—young man like that, you never know. But he didn't seem to have a… what do you call it? A house-warming party. No loud music, either. And let me tell you, detective, I was very grateful for that. We get tourists here in the summer who never seem to turn the wireless off. What's the point of coming to the ocean if you can't even _hear_ it?"

In the pause that followed, they watched her pour her own cup of tea. Her hands were so gnarled with age and arthritis that Lestrade half-expected that she'd drop it and spill hot tea all over everyone, but she navigated the strainer and tea spoon without incident. "I did hear one row," she said at length.

"When?" John asked.

"Well, it was bin night last week. I know because Terry Vance from across the street comes and puts out mine, and he'd just left when I heard something going on. He was over to put them out again tonight, so Tuesday, would have been. A week ago exactly."

"Who was having the row?" Lestrade went for his pocket for a notepad, but John beat him to it, giving Rose an apologetic half-smile.

"The young woman—Sadie, you said her name was—and the man who lives there."

"What about?"

"I don't really know. I couldn't hear his side of it, and didn't get much of hers. She was shouting; nearly hysterical. He was all quiet, like. But I did hear her say 'you don't know what it's like', and _'I_ care what they think of me', as if he'd said 'I don't care what they think of you', you know?" She paused. "No, wait," she said. "Maybe she said 'you don't know what _he's_ like.' I don't really know, sorry. I was trying not to listen. People's rows are private, you know."

"Yes. They can be really helpful to think back on when something happens, though," Lestrade said. "No rows after that?"

Rose sipped her tea. "Now I come to think of it," she said, "I don't think I saw the woman and the little one after that night."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel I should apologise for this chapter being a lot of conversation and not a lot of action. I'm sorry. The action won't make sense without the information first. Thank you for being patient :)


	12. On the Beach

When John returned to headquarters at nine o'clock, he found Molly sitting on the bed in their room, her laptop on her knees. She'd already moved a table and chairs from the corner near the window to turn it into a blanket fort for Charlie, who was peeking out from underneath it at intervals and chuckling like an owlet.

"Yes, I see you," Molly teased her as John came in. "Cheeky girl."

"Wow, Molly, that's professional-level blanket-fort making," John said, stopping in the doorway to admire her handiwork. "Did I miss a class on that at Barts?" He got down on the floor and lifted one side of the blanket up to find Charlie, who erupted into giggles again.

"Dad taught me when I was little," Molly said, smiling. "I read this library book I probably should have… I don't really remember it, except that it was about wolves, and the night I read it there was a late storm. I was scared to sleep in my own room, so we made a blanket fort in the living room. I slept it in for weeks."

Not for the first time, John thought that he'd have liked his father-in-law. He drew the blanket down again and got to his feet, leaning over the mattress to plant a kiss on Molly's forehead. "So it turns out Derrick Rice might be a bit of a creep," he said. "With a big obsession with Sadie Holland. Sherlock seemed to think it was important, but he didn't say he thought Derrick actually did it. Did you get anywhere with the police pathologist?" Molly had offered to run her own mini-investigation into the condition of Brett's remains and what, if anything, could be derived about his killer from them.

"No cause of death, sorry," Molly said, "but I'm not surprised. That was almost certainly going to be a head injury of some kind, and, well, until someone _finds_ the head, we can only guess."

"And a single bullet to the temple is a completely different killer to sixteen blows with an oar," John groaned. "So that's not much help. Anything else?"

"He hadn't had breakfast yet, but we knew that, because there was food laid out—John, why were they eating rice at eight o'clock in the morning?"

John, who'd been known to happily eat room-temperature pizza at 7 a.m., shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"It might. Anyway, he hadn't had a chance to eat yet. As far as the Penzance pathologist could tell, Brett was in good physical condition. A bit lean, but that seems at least partly genetics."

John thought about Brett's mother and sister—both decidedly on the dumpy side—but said nothing. Chris Holland was sparse, though it was hard to tell what he'd been like as a younger man.

"No drugs or alcohol in his system," Molly went on. She'd plaited her hair over one shoulder, and started absently unravelling it. "Which might be important, if the lady in the fish and chip shop wasn't just gossiping and had it right that Brett was a drinker. There were some bruises here and there, but they were old and Dr. Lancombe didn't think they were significant to the crime—just the sort of barked shins and things you'd get if you were on an unsteady boat."

She was plaiting her hair up again. And down. And up again. Molly was oblivious to the signs she was agitated, but this one was almost as obvious to John as when she compulsively played with her wedding ring. He sat down beside her.

"Molly, if there's something you're not telling me…"

"The rope burn," she blurted out. "He thought I'd got that wrong. That it was just subcutaneous hypostasis. I'm so sorry. I was sure—"

John nodded. Just the week before, a very sick five-year-old had come into the A&E during his shift, and he'd made an initial diagnosis of acute bronchitis. He'd then ordered a blood test and chest x-ray, which revealed the poor kid actually had pneumonia. Every doctor got it wrong at least once, but John lived in terror that he'd misdiagnose a kid with a harmless bug when they were dying of meningitis. "Hey," he said lightly. "They had the arm under laboratory conditions. You were having a look on your hands and knees at the aquarium. I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. It doesn't really change the investigation much, either way— and for all we know, you could still be right."

Molly gave a disconsolate murmur.

Having an inspiration, John drew his phone out of his pocket. "Actually," he said. "Something you can help us with." He went into his photo files and passed the phone to her so she could have a look. "These photos were taken on the _Marie Celeste_ before Forensics got to it. Sherlock says something's out of place in these pictures, but he doesn't know what."

She looked up, frowning. "John," she said. "You don't think he's…?"

John shook his head. "Not when Charlie's living with him," he said. "I made him promise that."

He had, and Sherlock had solemnly sworn it: no drugs, none at all, while Charlie was living at the flat. Nowhere on his person, nowhere in his flat, nowhere in his system. John believed him completely, but was now plagued by the idea that if he and Molly ever moved out, Sherlock would immediately fall of the wagon, deliberately or otherwise.

"It's not that," he said. "To be honest, I think he keeps thinking about Christabel. That's bound to throw him off. Anyway, so something's wrong with these photos. What do you think?"

Molly peered at the phone screen for ten or fifteen seconds. Then she gave it a hesitant swipe with one forefinger, forward, then back again. She looked up. "Oh, John," she scolded playfully. "I can't believe you didn't notice!"

"Notice what?"

"The high chair's sitting too far over from anyone sitting on those chairs," she said, pointing to the places laid. "I wouldn't put Charlie in her high chair where I couldn't even reach her. And anyway, there's no food laid out for Maisie. Can you imagine how upset Charlie would be if we had breakfast in front of her and didn't share?"

* * *

Judith Lessen, proprietoress of the Ship Inn, had coyly referred to Sherlock and Donovan's room as the 'Deluxe Honeymoon Suite.' There didn't seem to be anything particularly deluxe about it, however. A neat, clean, cosy room, with a king-sized bed and low bay windows looking out onto the water.

"Derrick Rice." Donovan threw her bag down near the inside of the doorway and dropped into an armchair, then leaned over to open the curtains, even though nothing much could be seen except her own reflection. "Got to be."

Sherlock, dumping his own suitcase onto the bed, looked up. "Sorry…?"

"What's got into you?" Donovan asked peevishly. "You've been vague-as all day. Derrick Rice is our man. Apart from the fact that he's got a creepy fixation with Sadie and probably offed Brett because of that, we know he was in the area, that he had a boat, and he knew how to pilot it. End of story, unless you want to argue they were killed by pirates."

"Forensics have been all over the _Lady Marlborough_ ," Sherlock pointed out, taking off his coat and scarf and tossing them down beside his suitcase. "No indication Brett or Sadie were ever on it. It's definitely not our crime scene."

"Well, maybe he hired a boat?"

"No record of that happening, either," Sherlock said scathingly. "It's true that Rice has a fixation with Sadie, and that he's shown in the interview room to have a temper he struggles to master. But neither of these things equate to him thinking killing Brett would be a way to get Sadie."

"You said he does have a temper."

"Exactly. This was a premeditated crime. If it was a crime of passion, I'd have already solved it—the killer would have confessed, or at least, they wouldn't have left such a contradictory set of clues. This is more in line with someone who deliberately wanted to cover their trail. To create confusion."

"It's worked." She got up. "Though I've got feeling you know more than you're saying."

"Always," he said. "I need to make sure my theory is sound before putting it forward. The last pieces are falling into place."

"Great. Well, I'm going to have a shower, 'cause I do my best thinking there. You?"

Sherlock made no indication he'd heard her. When she emerged from her half-hour shower, wrapped up in pyjamas and dressing gown, it was to find Sherlock exactly where she'd left him, except that he was now poring over something on his phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Video," he muttered, without looking up.

"Of…?"

"Maisie Holland. I'm trying to determine if she's biologically Brett and Sadie's child."

"What, just by looking at a video?" Donovan plonked herself ungracefully beside him and peered at the screen. On it, a little blonde girl, dressed up in a Frozen dress of light blue, was sucking on a wad of wrapping paper. Before her was a wooden xylophone in pine and bright primary colours, but it apparently lacked the allure of the paper it had been wrapped in. A male voice encouraged her with "Maisie, look!" Then two arms came into view, picking up the xylophone and tapping it with the little mallet. It made a tinny, hollow sound. _Bonk! Bonk!_ The little girl stared at it for a second or two. Then, breaking into a grin, she grasped for the mallet. _Bonk! Bonk-bonk!_

"Parnell just sent through a copy of her birth certificate. It lists Brett and Sadie as her birth parents. And, as far as I can tell, she is." Sherlock sounded highly annoyed by this. "Chin, jaw and smile like her mother's. Everything else is so blatantly like her father, there can be no question of it."

"But you're not happy with that."

"No. Apart from a telling problem with some of the dates of Sadie's medical care, there are items on the certificate that indicate it's a fake. Maisie's place of birth is listed as the North Cornwall. At the time of her birth, though, there was no maternity unit attached to that hospital."

He handed his phone to Donovan, who watched for a few seconds more. Now Sadie was in the shot, helping her daughter unwrap a box bigger than herself. Early morning, obviously: Sadie was in her nightie, bright-red hair disheveled, and Maisie was still wearing bunny slippers. A normal, happy family.

"Who took this?"

"Adrian Frost gave it to Parnell. Siobhan took it for Maisie's birthday."

"Can you tell if it was taken in Cornwall or in London?"

"London." Sherlock pointed to one of the windows behind Sadie and Maisie; at the resolution the phone offered, little more than a block of light azure. She caught a glimpse of something growing close outside. A flash of green leaves. "Begonias," Sherlock announced. "Difficult to tell unless you zoom in, but without a doubt to me."

"Okay, so?"

"They're hyper-sensitive to salinity. The chance of Brett and Sadie Holland keeping them alive in Cornwall is almost non-existent." Sherlock got up. "You'd better not have used all the hot water," he said.

"Oh, I might have." Donovan smiled sweetly, watching Sherlock collect his things and slam the ensuite door behind him in high dudgeon.

~~o0o~~

By the time Sherlock emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Donovan was kneeling on the carpet at the foot of the bed, arranging a pile of pillows and blankets that she'd pulled out of the linen closet.

"Well," she said, looking up at him. "I can cross _that_ off my bucket list. I always wondered what you slept in. I thought maybe you had those pyjama suits made up to look like tuxedos."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm wrecked, Sherlock," she said. "And so are you. So let's just get these beds organised and get some sleep, okay? If you snore, I can't promise I'm not going to smother you in your sleep."

"No, I mean, what are you currently, physically doing."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm sleeping on the floor," she said.

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

"Sally—"

"'Cause I've spent twelve years as a detective trying to get the guys—and now Jones is dead, they're _all guys—_ to stop giving me special treatment because I'm a woman, that's why."

"I wasn't giving you special treatment." Sherlock sounded miffed.

"You were going to volunteer to sleep on the floor, just 'cause you're a man."

"And you naturally assumed _you_ were going to sleep on the floor."

"No, I _naturally assumed_ you were going to have a macho little snit-fit if I told you I was, so I thought I'd make the best of possession being nine-tenths of the law. Wasn't disappointed, either. So..." She dropped down onto her makeshift mattress with a little bounce and crossed her legs. "How much should I enjoy it?"

Sherlock blinked. "Sorry, enjoy what?"

"The amazing hot sex we're having while staying here on our affair." She gestured to the headboard of the bed. "If we can hear people clinking glasses in the restaurant, they're going to be able to hear whether or not people are having sex in here. Which is creepy, when you think about it. So I'm just asking, so we have our stories straight, whether you're a crap lay or whether I c-"

"Yes, thank you, I see your point." Sherlock reached out for his phone, which Donovan had left on the bedside table. He needed to check the exact wording of one of Greg's texts from two days ago—all building a theory. To his surprise, though, the top message in the list had changed.

_Hi Sherlock. Hope your investigation progressing. Lots of huge breakthroughs. JSYK flying back 2 Berlin Tuesday. Couldn't get a day flight any earlier. Sorry again._

_— Christa_

The text was marked as read. And it had come in while he'd been in the shower.

He looked across at Donovan, who was still cross-legged on the floor and brushing her hair. "Did you go through my phone?"

"Uh." Donovan paused mid-stroke, mortified. "No," she said, putting her brush down. "But I'm going to explain, so just shut up while I do. Your text alert went off while I was watching the video of Maisie, and I assumed it was about the _case_ , okay? And if it was about the case, it couldn't wait. I had a look at that text. And ONLY that text. I didn't know it was private. I didn't really think you got private texts. I'm sorry."

"Yes," he seethed. " 'I'm sorry' seems to be endemic among the female class."

"Oh, well, while we're at it, then, that thing in Dorset..."

Sherlock blinked. "Sorry, what thing in Dorset?"

"Sherlock, don't be dim," Donovan said, sighing deeply. "It's not one of my favourite memories either. I didn't know you did things like that, just to get information for cases. So I didn't think you had girlfriends."

"I don't," said Sherlock through his teeth.

"Okay." Donovan nodded. Then, after a long pause, "So who is she, if she's not your girlfriend?"

No answer.

"Oy." She picked up a pair of her socks, wrapped up into a hard little bundle, and threw them at him. "If it's a personal question and you want me to shut up, you can just say so..."

But Sherlock was no longer listening. He stood at the open window, the sea breeze playing with tendrils of his hair; abruptly he squinted and scrabbled to pull the sash up.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Donovan rushed over to see.

From the vantage point of the window, they could see most of the bay as it curved east. Throughout the evening, as for the past two days, small bands of police officers and concerned locals had been wandering up and down the shoreline, searching for any sign of Sadie or Maisie Holland. Now a group of four—men, probably, though it was hard to tell in the dark and at that distance—were gathered at a clump of rocks just at the point where the bay began to reach out to sea again. All of them were looking at something at their feet. Another small group, headed by a female constable in uniform, had just rounded the sea wall. One of the men called out something, and the constable broke from the rest of the group, jogging toward them over the wet, hard sand.

Without a word Sherlock was out the door. It took Donovan only a few seconds to put on her shoes on and follow suit, pursuing him down the narrow staircase, through the downstairs pub and out the door. Sherlock was still in his pyjamas and bare feet, and she caught him up easily as he tried to negotiate the twin perils of wet sand and sharp rocks.

"You haven't found her?" Sherlock sounded puffed as he pulled to a halt, but Donovan knew he was in too good shape for it; he was back in character. The mysteriously Bristolian Cockney who took his mistress to a remote village in Cornwall.

"It's… I don't think it's a person…" The constable, a plain, stocky woman with hair pulled severely back behind her ears and her hat in one hand, pulled out a little torch, hardly bigger than a pen. One of the men who had found the bundle grabbed a stick and, before anyone could stop him, dragged it through the wad of material to unfurl it.

It was a tiny dress of navy blue, bordered with pastel pink and machine-embroidered with a character Sherlock immediately recognised: Peppa Pig, also a favourite of Charlie's. Attached to it was a mushy pile of tulle that was probably once a pink tutu. Dark stains were smeared across the ensemble, shoulder to hem. Sherlock brushed his fingertips across the worst of the stain and sniffed them.

"Oh, my God," the constable blurted out. The light from her torch flickered wildly and he staggered, but in the dark it was unclear if she'd tripped or her legs had given out.

"No," Sherlock barked at her, giving her shoulder a hard little shake. "No. Be calm."

"I _am_ calm!"

"You're not calm; you're borderline hysterical. Stop it."

Donovan opened her mouth to interject. Before she could say anything, however, Sherlock took her by the arm and walked her a few paces upwind of the little group.

"Donovan," he said, "you need to keep that woman from having a meltdown and bringing every man, woman and child in Mousehole over here to ruin the evidence and start gossip that we may not be able to stop. And you need to do it without breaking character."

Donovan raised her eyebrows. "You think she's getting hysterical because she's a woman?"

"Oh, for God's sake, will you look at her?" He gestured with one arm. "Her age and accent both indicate she's local. Her hair's tied back with a pink tie with a plastic strawberry on it— a child's tie, probably grabbed at home. So she has a daughter about the same age as Maisie. She's probably acquainted with the family. And most obviously, I think she's getting hysterical because she's self-evidently _getting hysterical."_

"I-"

"Yes, this is Maisie's dress--brought in by the high tide, and in the last hour. Someone else would have found by now it if it had washed up this morning. Very likely she wasn't wearing it on the day of her father's murder, and it's an almost one hundred percent certainty that she did not wear it after. It's been used to wipe blood, probably off the killer's hands or face. _Not_ her own blood. Her father's."

She looked up at him. "You're sure?"

"Certain."

Donovan looked back at the officer, who was now yelling at everyone to stay away from the bloodstained bundle. She certainly did seem only just this side of losing it completely. "Okay," she said. "So I'm the Sister Solidarity Unit. What are _you_ doing?"

"I need to call Lestrade," he said. "And get him and John down here. We've got a chance of finding more evidence if we can clear the beach of the idly curious. And I want all of our suspects flown down here immediately. We need to question them. I need to question them. Beryl Holland has a lot to answer for."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For details on "what happened in Dorset", see chapter five of Come Forth, Lazarus. Thanks again for reading xx


	13. Neck

Of course, John thought to himself, he was just being stupid again.

He loved Molly. Charlie had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. But strolling along the midnight beach, he had a sudden thought: _this is like it used to be._

 _Like it used to be_ was, once John thought about it properly, quite a short window of time—the eighteen months between that first meeting in the lab at Barts and Sherlock's apparent suicide from its roof. John sometimes referred to this period as _when I was living at Baker Street,_ even though he was living at Baker Street now. Mrs Hudson had been alive, and Molly, for John at least, had been a shadowy figure—a dark-haired, girlish woman who was painfully shy and idolised Sherlock Holmes to the point where they were the only ones in the world who didn't find it embarrassing; and the only reason Sherlock didn't find it embarrassing was because he was largely oblivious to it. And Molly had been completely oblivious to John Watson: _She forgot my name once,_ he thought in some amusement. _How do you forget a name like 'John'?_

But despite Molly's best efforts, and a string of what could loosely be called 'girlfriends', both John and Sherlock had been bachelors in those days, prepared to rush out the door on a case at the drop of a hat. Once, literally, the drop of a hat. John had never written that case up. _The Adventure of the Dropped Hat_ wasn't going to sell well to the public, even though the twelve-year-old boy who'd arrived at Baker Street to tell them his uncle had randomly picked up a lost cap at Waterloo Station, and he _didn't know why,_ had almost sparked an international incident before Sherlock could stop the Prime Minister from being kidnapped.

Too late for all that now. The blog was ancient history, still up as a sort of period piece, a monument to the Old Adventures. The New Adventures were different, and it wasn't just that now John had to take Molly's and Charlie's schedules into account before participating in them.

John Watson had idolised Sherlock Holmes. He still idolised him, and trusted him… to an extent. But he had never quite got beyond Sherlock's betrayal. Molly's betrayal. He felt it every time he took his shirt off and saw the ugly scar under his left-hand ribs. He'd felt it when Sherlock had taken a case in Bolivia, and he'd been denied travel insurance and stayed behind. There were still nights he left Molly sleeping, put on a jacket, and went out to walk those feelings off. And there were still mornings when he returned in the half-light to get ready for work or for a day with Charlie, and was still angry.

Neither was Sherlock Holmes this unchanging, unchangeable thing; the ruthless constant in John Watson's world that he'd once been. His mind was still racing, constantly racing; liable to explode into rage or substance abuse if it wasn't used enough. He still sharpened his tongue on people he thought were idiots (and this, still, was practically everybody). He still vacillated between impeccable upper-class manners and childish tantrums, between weeks on end where he barely got out of his pyjamas and cases where he sometimes didn't sleep for days or eat in a solid week. But his stride was a little slower when he had John with him, his hands more steady. His smile appeared more often, and when it did, fine lines crinkled around his eyes and mouth. In the past few months, a few wisps of silver had appeared in the curls above his ears.

According to Sherlock's calculations, the wind and tide could have deposited jetsam from the _Marie Celeste_ somewhere in a four-mile stretch of coast, roughly corresponding to two miles north of the village and two miles south. Bearing that in mind, Lestrade and McMannis had divided into two teams. Lestrade's had been tasked with searching the sands, rocks and cliffs from the Ship Inn toward Lamorna Cove in the south. McMannis's team of detectives made their way to Newlyn in the north.

Lestrade had definitely drawn the short straw for their route. Rocks dropped straight into the sea in places, forcing them to sometimes make their way inland through thick ocean scrub that braced against the freezing offshore winds. But Sherlock, at least, didn't seem particularly bothered by the landscape, nor by the limited capabilities of the torch he carried, and John was more than capable of keeping up with him. Sherlock was more methodical than most of the searchers, but he worked faster, and before long the two of them had outstripped the others and were walking alone in the darkness. Silence passed between them for a few minutes.

"Well," John finally said. "I needed the exercise."

Sherlock grunted in vague assent.

"Are we looking for anything in particular?"

"What do you think of Derrick Rice?" Sherlock asked, as if he hadn't heard.

John collected the thoughts he'd gained since going through Rice's house and talking with Rose. "Dunno," he finally said. "Definitely something wrong between him and Sadie. Were they having an affair, do you think?"

"Always the romantic angle with you, John, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't exactly call _that_ romantic," John said. "But even if he had it for Sadie, why kill Brett? His best mate? And what's Beryl got to do with any of this?"

"What indeed?" Sherlock raised one eyebrow.

"I didn't like her either," John said, double-stepping to keep pace with Sherlock. "But for her to have killed him-"

"There are more ways to kill someone than you might think."

John turned to him, surprised at the gravity of his tone. But Sherlock was searching the sand, moving the beam of his torch in long sweeping motions, apparently absorbed in what he was doing.

"All right," John said. "So she—oh, God!"

He drew his sleeve up over his nose and mouth. There was no mistaking the smell that had just slapped both of them in the face. It seemed to drift not from the ocean, but from an apex of rocks toward the cliffside part of the beach, forming a sort of tiny cave. In front of it was a small bundle, swathed in kelp.

"John." Sherlock laid his hand on John's arm. "Stay here."

"What-?"

"Wait for me here."

John knew better than to argue with what amounted to an order, and stayed put. As Sherlock made his way over to the mouth of the cave, he heard a shout over his shoulder from further down the beach. Halloran, if he'd heard right, though he hadn't made out any words. He turned and waved the torch in his hand to signal him, just as Sherlock turned his own torch off and crouched down beside the stinking, kelp-riddled mass.

"Why'd you turn your... oh, God-"

John began to make his way over, but had only taken a few steps before Sherlock practically bounced to his feet. "Nothing to worry about," he said cheerfully, flicking the torch back on and gesturing with it. "It's just Brett Holland's head."

John sank his heels into the wet sand and let out a breath. "I'm going to live to regret saying this," he said, "but I've never been so thrilled to find someone's disembodied head before. Cause of death."

"Yes," Sherlock said shortly, just as Halloran jogged up to them; from the rocks at the other end of the beach, Lestrade hailed them with a shout. Neither the time nor the place for John to express his gratitude: Sherlock had thought they'd found Maisie Holland's body, and tried to shield him from it.

* * *

After the gruesome, but not entirely unexpected, discovery of Brett Holland's head, John had been sent back to the resort to get some sleep. Most of the main suspects in the case were due to arrive in the village in the morning, sans Derrick Rice, presumably sleeping the sleep of the virtuous up at the Old Coastguard. As he brushed his teeth and turned the ensuite light out, John wondered to himself if Derrick knew his best mate's head had just been found, abandoned on the sand like a piece of garbage. But the investigators, and most of Mousehole, had already known Brett was dead. There was nothing immediate to suggest he'd suffered more than they'd first thought.

John slept soundly for the rest of the night.

~~o0o~~

By half-past eight, he and Molly had managed to get themselves and their daughter organised. Molly dropped him at the promenade in Mousehole, as arranged, while she took Charlie into Newlyn. The rain had broken up for the time being, and while the beaches around Mousehole were still closed, she was determined to take Charlie for a play in the sand or a feet-chilling paddle somewhere. John kissed her goodbye a little absently, getting out of the car and watching it take off again and turn the corner before crossing the road to where Sherlock and Donovan stood waiting.

Sherlock had a cigarette in one hand, and Donovan's hand in the other. Although John expected Sherlock to maintain his ruse in public, he still had to force himself to not stare as they rounded the corner and wandered a few steps up one of the winding cobblestoned lanes. Once they were out of sight, it was difficult to tell whether Donovan wrested her hand from Sherlock's or he shoved it at her.

"Okay," John said. "You said it was important. What am I doing here?"

"Gathering information." Sherlock ashed his cigarette on Donovan's shoes. "There is a place," he said, "where everyone in a small village goes, and where the staff know everything about all of them. They know who's got weak arches and who's a Type 1 diabetic. They know which brand of cigarette everyone smokes; who's taken up the habit and who's quit. They know who's started buying condoms and who's stopped buying tampons; they notice when a man buys flowers or a woman changes her brand of shower gel. They know when someone moves here or moves away, when they're born, when they turn eighteen, when they retire, and when they die. Behold, John." He waved one hand at the stone wall opposite them. "The humble corner shop."

John's gaze made its way toward the main road, coming to rest on an open doorway festooned with colourful plastic streamers. At this junction, an old man in a knitted vest and tam emerged, carrying a sandwich board advertising ice cream.

"So we're interviewing someone," Donovan said flatly.

"Oh, that's such a boring word for it. Donovan, you and I are going to go in first and pretend to be browsing. When I start talking, I want you to agree with everything I say. John, you wait out here for a minute or two. When you come in, pretend you don't know us, and _contradict_ everything I say."

"I'm on it."

Whether Donovan was 'on it' too was apparently not Sherlock's problem. He took one last drag of his cigarette, crushed it under his heel, and practically dragged Donovan toward the open shop doorway.

John chuckled to himself. _Contradict everything I say._ That was never much of a challenge.

There was no way he was resorting to actually counting, but when the minute flipped over on his watch he made his way over and ducked through the streamers in the shop doorway. He found himself in a gloomy, over-cluttered shop with small windows, reeking strongly of damp carpet and old books. The first thing to hand on his left was a revolving rack of postcards, and he pretended to peruse them, keeping an ear out. Near the front of the shop, he heard a sort of coquettish female whine before realising it was Sally Donovan. Glancing over, he saw she and Sherlock were standing next to the ice-cream freezer.

"I want this one," she pouted, pointing at the frosted glass.

"Why can't you just take a bite of mine?" Sherlock wanted to know.

John coughed explosively into one sleeve.

"Because I don't _like_ mint," Donovan said. "Please, Billy? For me?"

Sherlock pulled the freezer open and reached into it, then took both ice creams up to the counter, where the elderly shop assistant they'd seen earlier was patiently waiting. "Sorry to take so long," he said cheerfully, plunking the ice creams down and fishing into his coat pocket for his wallet. "I should know to never argue with a pregnant woman who needs her fix of salted caramel."

John glanced over in alarm, but though he could only see Donovan's back, she didn't seem to falter.

"Yep," she said, sighing deeply. "Well, who's fault is that, then?"

"Guilty as charged." Sherlock took his change and handed one of the ice creams to her. She ripped the packaging open then and there before Sherlock, glancing at the dour-faced shop assistant, offered, "awful, isn't it, this murder?"

"You could say." Judging by his voice, the shop assistant smoked four packets of cigarettes a day. "And they've not caught who did it, neither. For all we know, there's a deranged maniac in the village."

Through the rungs of the postcard rack, John could see him fixing Sherlock with a stern eye, as if to suggest that _he_ was probably the deranged maniac.

"I heard the mother did it," Sherlock said casually. "His mother, I mean. I heard she was down here the day it happened."

"I suppose she was," he conceded with a grumble. "She was certainly in here on Thursday, having a right old row, right in my shop, while I was trying to get the fruit and veg delivery in here."

Sherlock looked up. "What, she was having a row with her son?"

"With Brett? No, with his mate. I dunno what _his_ name is, but he sticks out like a sore thumb—the three of them did, what with the accents."

"So that's how you knew it was Brett's mother? Her accent?" Sherlock sounded dismissive. "Anyone can bung on an RP accent."

"Oh, she's been down a couple times, though I haven't seen her in a while, actually. Real ball-busting bitch—sorry," he said, glancing at Donovan, who had a mouthful of ice cream and gave him a thumbs up. "The whole village knows how those two got on—I heard they came down here in the first place to get away from her, but she kept showing up anyway. But there's no call to go saying she killed him."

"Excuse me," said John, clearing his throat and moving out from behind the postcard rack. "Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn't help overhearing. The murder on the boat, right? A Brett somebody? I heard his _sister_ did it."

"Where in God's name did you hear that?" the assistant demanded, staring in disbelief. "The sister's a good sort; down here all the time. Sian, her name is, or something like. Mad keen on the water."

"She was into boating as well?" Donovan asked, poking a sliver of chocolate into her mouth.

"Oh, the whole family, as far as I could see, and that mate of theirs. But if you reckon his sister battered him to death and cut off his arms and legs, I'll say you've got rocks in your head. A woman wouldn't hurt a little one like that anyway—especially not when she's got one herself." He glared at John. "You going to buy something, or what?"

John swiped a couple of items off a nearby shelf and put them on the counter, not looking at Sherlock and Donovan as they left. When he came out of the shop himself a minute later, they were nowhere to be seen. Walking up away from the shore, he found them in the lane behind, apparently working their way up into a squabble.

"What the hell did he mean by that?" he interrupted them. "Siobhan has her own kid?"

"No, she doesn't." Sherlock scrunched the wrapper of his ice-cream up in his free hand; automatically, John reached out and took it before Sherlock could decide to throw it on the ground.

"But Beryl was here," Donovan said.

"Yes, I thought she was," Sherlock said. "Like I said, this is all back to Beryl. But if I'd gone in there and asked him directly if she was here last week, he'd have lied to me."

"Why?"

"Suspicious of strangers. He was almost about to accuse _you_ of murdering Brett Holland, John. But now we know that Beryl was here about the time of the murder, probably with Chris, and that anyone in that family, with the exception of Maisie, could probably have handled a small boat. Especially if they weren't working alone. We also know that there's at least one independent source in Mousehole who thinks that while Siobhan wouldn't murder and dismember Brett, Beryl might. Well." He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his hands. "We're expected at Penzance Police Station at ten to interview Adrian and the Hollands. I'll explain our strategy on the way. Come on—and you'd best give those to Dyer, John," he said, glancing down at the box in John's right hand. "I'm fairly sure your horse has bolted."

John looked down and realised that, as well as a box of sticking plasters and a bottle of hand sanitiser, he'd absent-mindedly bought a pack of condoms. "Sure," he said. "Good idea. I'd offer them to you and your girlfriend, but apparently it's too late for that, too."

"Yeah, thanks a lot." Donovan gave Sherlock's shoulder a hard shove. "You're not funny. If any of this gets back to Lestrade-"

"Consider it a tax," Sherlock said, "on the amount of money I'm spending on you."

"You're not actually pregnant, though, are you?" John asked her as they started to walk back to the car. "I mean, obviously not to your boyfriend _Billy_ here…"

She looked disgusted. "God, no," she said. "I'd neck myself."


	14. Adrian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really one half of a punishingly long 6.5k chapter, so there are further explanations and reveals to come. Thanks again for reading, and for all your support. xx

As circumstances had it, the task of interviewing Beryl Holland eventually fell to Lestrade and Donovan. Forced to triage his priorities, Sherlock had decided that he needed to interview Adrian Frost in person more urgently. Since there needed to be a sworn officer in attendance at an official police interview, that role fell to Jake Dyer. It would be the first time he'd ever led an interview. Sherlock and John arrived at Penzance Police Station to find Adrian waiting in the interview room, and Dyer so on edge he was all but doing jumping jacks by the front desk.

"No lawyer," was the first thing out of his mouth. "He doesn't have to have one, and I guess he figures he doesn't need one, but… I kind of wish he did, you know?"

"You'll be fine," John offered, watching Sally Donovan knock on the other interview room door, open it and go in. "Don't worry about Sherlock or me, just worry about Adrian."

"Don't worry about Adrian, either." Sherlock was facetiously adjusting one of his sleeves. He pulled his right cuff in sudden pique, so hard that he broke the button. With a hiss of irritation, he let the button clatter its way unheeded toward the community noticeboard and shrugged his shoulders twice, as if preparing for action. "I'll do the talking."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" John asked him, frowning.

"All my ideas are good ones."

John scrubbed one hand over his jaw. "Yeah. Well."

"He's still a _suspect_ , John."

"I know," he said. "Just, look, if I tell you to shut up in there-"

But Sherlock was no longer listening. Across the waiting room, an elderly couple were huddled in grey plastic chairs lined up against the wall. The man was long-legged and barrel-chested, though he must have been closer to seventy than sixty; a full grey beard and large square glasses obscured much of his ruddy, pleasant face. The woman beside him had generous proportions of everything, from her mass of grey curls and aquiline nose to her and flat feet. She was digging into her handbag. Eventually she pulled out a sweet wrapped in printed wax paper and handed it to the man, then glanced up at Sherlock, who blinked and nearly took a step back. Grey eyes. Sadie's eyes.

"That's Jackie Monash," he said hollowly.

"Um. Yeah." Jake bounced restlessly off his heels. If they didn't commence the interview soon, he'd launch into orbit.

Sherlock ignored him, crossing the floor—straight past Chris Holland, as if he'd never seen him before—and approaching the woman. She stared into space for a good three or four seconds before registering that someone was beside her, but there was no alarm in her expression as she looked up at him.

"Hello." She ran the back of her hand over her dry nose. Dry eyes, too, though they were red-rimmed, and not entirely from jetlag. Her voice was deeper than her appearance would suggest. Deeper than her daughter's. Sherlock thought briefly of the recording Adrian had sent the police of Maisie's birthday. Sadie, with her bedraggled hair and girlish laugh.

"Mrs. Monash?"

"Yes—Jackie. This is my husband, Jimmy—" Jimmy leaned across his wife to shake Sherlock's hand in a motion of perfunctory masculinity. "Sorry, I don't think I know you."

"Sherlock Holmes."

At this she paused, still in the act of shaking Sherlock's hand. Her palm rested in his. "You're… you're the great detective," she blurted out.

Sherlock briefly dipped his head; a gesture somewhere between a nod and a bow. "I'm Sherlock Holmes," he said. "And I'm going to find Sadie and Maisie. After that, Mrs. Monash, you can make up your own mind as to whether I'm a great detective."

She squeezed his hand between his. "God bless you."

~~o0o~~

"Sorry we're a bit late," Dyer apologised breezily, admitting Sherlock and John into the room and shutting the door behind them with one shoulder. He garbled out a hasty preliminary to the interview for the benefit of the tape recording, then passed a cup of coffee across the desk to Adrian. Adrian ignored it, even though he looked like he hadn't slept since Siobhan's attempted suicide.

"Why am I here?" he demanded in a suspiciously croaky voice. "I told you. I don't know what happened to Brett, and I don't know where Sadie and Maisie are. Siobhan needs me-"

"All right, let's talk about Siobhan, then; the sooner we talk, the sooner you can get back to her." Sherlock's gathered his coat up around his legs and sat down. "How do you feel about children, Adrian?"

He blinked. "Sorry, what?"

"Children," Sherlock continued, straight-faced. "I noticed you don't have any of your own."

Dyer cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair a little, rapping a pen against the desk until a glance from Sherlock stopped him.

"Well," Adrian said, shrugging. "No; well spotted. There's time. We're only thirty. Not ready yet."

"No, _you're_ ready," Sherlock said. "Siobhan isn't."

"I don't understand," Adrian said.

"You already know that Siobhan attempted to hang herself in your bedroom on Monday." Sherlock glanced down at Adrian's hands. Steady, though he was picking at his fingernails. "What you mightn't know is that if it weren't for CPR, Siobhan's last words might have been, _If you only knew what he was like, you'd say it was a pity he didn't lose both his eyes."_

"I don't-"

"We were talking about your brother Ethan, Adrian. One of the things that struck me—struck all of us—when he we went to interview Siobhan and her parents was that your wife seemed like a kind, hospitable woman. She offered us a cup of tea, for example, and was upset that her mother hadn't. And for her to think it a pity that Ethan _wasn't permanently blinded?_ Just because he's a drug addict?"

Adrian pressed his tired eyes with the heels of his hands. "I wasn't lying when I said Ethan was a junkie," he finally said.

"I know." Back in London, Gregson and Parnell had tracked down Ethan Frost and visited him at the grubby block of council flats he now called home. Grubby little man, too, by all accounts. Meth. He'd had weeping sores on his face, and his hair had probably last been washed when Blair was in Downing Street.

"I wasn't lying about him getting into deep shit with his dealer, either."

"I know. Where you started lying was when you told us Ethan came to you for help. In actual fact, he came to your home not for help, but to rob you."

"He tried to, anyway." Adrian scrubbed at his hair and bowed his head for a second, then let a breath out through his mouth. "How he got it into his head that we had anything worth stealing, I'll never know, but that's the drugs for you—those skeezy bastards would sell their own children for a fix."

Silence fell, so profound that they could hear Lestrade and Donovan interviewing Beryl in the adjoining room.

"What did Ethan do for a fix?" John asked him quietly.

"I wasn't home. Siobhan gave him our key cards and PINs and everything, but… I guess he thought we had something else. Money hidden in the house, or something."

"And when he wouldn't believe Siobhan that you didn't," Sherlock said, "he raped her."

Adrian flinched, as if Sherlock had struck him. After another two breaths through his mouth, he nodded. "He had a knife," he said. "I mean, it wasn't… it wasn't about..."

"Of course not," Sherlock said. "Rape is not about love, and it's only tangentially related to sexual desire. When Ethan could not take your money—money he felt entitled to—he retaliated by taking your wife's body. In his mind, another theft. Why didn't you go to the police?"

Adrian snorted. "Mr. Holmes, Ethan's been in trouble since he was twelve. You know what the police have done about it? _Nothing_. They keep giving him community sentences, sending him to rehab, making him rake leaves to show he's sorry. They've put him away twice—six month sentences. Both times, all he did was learn how to be a better criminal when he got out again. You think six months is a good enough sentence for what he did?"

"He'd get a damn sight more than six months for that," Dyer said. His face was as pleasant as usual and his voice calm, but his hands were bunched into tight fists. "The maximum penalty for rape is life."

"Since bloody when has anyone ever got life for rape? That's what _Siobhan_ got."

"And what Ethan got, too, after you set him on fire," Sherlock said. "Your ingenuity and patience is to be applauded. To pretend to be doing your duty as a good older brother, helping poor Ethan out with an insurance job. You could have saved yourself the effort and just killed him."

"Like I said," Adrian said. "Life sentence."

For half a minute, the only sound in the room was the hum of the fluorescent lights. From behind the partition wall, they could still hear faint voices. By the sounds of things, Lestrade and Donovan were _both_ giving Beryl Holland a bollocking. That didn't happen often. Despite their differences, Lestrade and Donovan made a great partnership. But their interview method was usually good-cop-bad-cop. When they were both bad-cop, the suspect was liable to come out of the interview room crying.

"What you didn't know," Sherlock said carefully, "is that Ethan did more than rape Siobhan. He also made her pregnant. With Maisie."

Adrian sucked in a breath. The sort of sound a man might make if he'd been stabbed in the back.

"She never told you—probably because she intended to terminate the pregnancy and didn't want to hurt you, or for you to try to change her decision. You were serving your sentence in prison, and no doubt Siobhan thought the subterfuge easier on both of you."

Adrian's mouth was open, his bottom teeth trembling in a row; but it was a few attempts before any coherent words came out of it. "Are you insane?" he finally got out. "I would _never_ have asked Siobhan to-"

"But someone did, Adrian. Someone _did_ ask her to carry that baby to term, and let them adopt it. Her brother, Brett."

Silence.

"Brett and Siobhan had been at the mercy of their controlling, mean-spirited mother since childhood, and obviously formed a close bond," Sherlock went on. "Close enough that while Siobhan couldn't tell her own husband she was pregnant, she could and did tell her brother. She thought he would be supportive of her choices, as he'd been all their lives. But this was different for Brett. Sadie had been trying to conceive a child for twelve years. How could he bear it that his sister conceived from a single encounter, and how could he cope seeing her have an abortion? He couldn't. He must have begged. And Siobhan—Adrian, your wife _agreed_. She agreed to have a child for Brett and Sadie."

"Oh my God." Adrian put his face in his hands.

"She's not quite your God, but you're lucky to have Siobhan, put it that way." Dyer pulled a sheet of paper out of his manila folder. "This is the birth certificate we were originally given for Maisie," he said, passing it over the table to Adrian, who took it with shaking hands. "It's pretty obviously fraudulent, once you get a good look at it. After a bit of digging, we discovered that Maisie Rose was born to Siobhan Ellen Frost at St Ives Hospital on October 9, 2014. Seven pounds, five ounces. There's a blank space where the father's name's meant to go. They were both released on the 12th, and Siobhan immediately initiated adoption proceedings with Brett and Sadie Holland. By the time you were released from prison in February, everything had been sorted. Brett and Sadie were living in Cornwall with their baby daughter, and Siobhan was back in London, willing to try to pick her life back up again, but she couldn't quite forget. Who could?"

"The perfect aunt," Sherlock said. "And she was prepared for this to go on for the rest of her life, until Brett was murdered and Sadie and Maisie went missing. She must have known that it would come out in the investigation that she was Maisie's birth mother; that you'd find out she'd lied to you about it for years. And then we came to the flat and asked her questions about your brother that brought it all back to her just how bad this might be for her, even if Maisie was recovered alive and well. She was prepared to die rather than face the possibility of losing you."

"Oh my God," Adrian said. "You think I'd leave Siobhan over a thing like… holy shit, what is _wrong_ with people? I'd never ask Siobhan to carry a rapist's baby! And I'd never leave her or hurt her because… wait..."

The penny dropped. he screwed his eyes shut and took a few deep breaths.

"Take it easy, mate," John said.

"You think—you think I found out and hurt Brett?" Adrian completely ignored John. "You think I'd hurt Sadie and Maisie? I didn't know any of this, Mr. Holmes, and even if I—"

"You didn't know, but you do now," Sherlock said. "You know what Siobhan went through to get Maisie into the world. So if you even slightly suspect someone of hurting her, we need to know. Now."

"I don't _know!"_

"Okay," Dyer broke in. "Okay. So why don't we go back to what you _do_ know, Adrian? Or things you might think."

At this, Adrian looked genuinely puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Well, not a lot of people know this, but when us coppers have a murder to solve, we sort our suspects out among ourselves by elimination. Was it Joe Blow? Could be, we put him in the 'maybe' basket and follow it up. Was it Bill Smith? Nah, he has a perfect alibi. And so on. Let's play that game now. Someone killed Brett, and all the evidence points to it being someone he knew. So how about I say a suspect, and you tell me whether you think they could have done it or not, and why? Impartial-like, the way we work in the police station. I'll go first. What if it was Sadie _herself_ who killed Brett? Can you think of a reason she might've wanted him dead?"

Sherlock mentally gave Dyer a tick of approval. Excellent suspect to start off with, not requiring Adrian to betray his wife or his in-laws.

"No," Adrian said, quickly but not suspiciously so. "I'm not going to tell you Brett and me were like brothers or anything, but we got on, and I think I'd have known if Sadie was ready to do him in over something."

"Even though the last time you saw them was Christmas?" Dyer asked innocently.

"Let's not do this trying-to-trap-me bullshit, okay? We were here in Mousehole last week. We were all here."

"By 'all'?"

"Chris, Beryl, Siobhan, me and Derrick. They came down Wednesday morning. But I really did do my back in at work on Wednesday, and I didn't get here until four in the morning on Friday. I didn't see Brett, Sadie or Maisie before they went missing that morning. I really  haven't seen them since Christmas."

"We know Beryl and Derrick were here on Thursday," Sherlock said. "They had a row in the corner shop opposite the promenade on Thursday morning. Foolish of Beryl her to make herself so conspicuous, then lie about ever being here. Do you know what they were having a row about?"

"No, because I wasn't _there_. _"_

"Do you know _anything?"_ Sherlock pressed his palms against the table.

"Sherlock," John muttered.

"Because," Sherlock continued, as if he hadn't heard, "I find it difficult to believe you went along with this idea, to the point of following the group all the way from London by yourself, but didn't even stop to ask what the purpose of the visit was. Clearly it was not intended as a friendly family reunion."

Adrian rubbed his eyes with both palms. "When I got out of prison," he said wearily, "I came home to find Chris and Beryl had moved into our house. Said they'd done it to keep Siobhan company."

"Did you believe that?" John asked.

"No. But I didn't know what else to think. I knew they were hard up for a quid, but I don't go around asking for the details on their bank accounts, right? Siobhan hated it, and no bloody wonder, the way her mother talks to her."

"Yes, we saw," John said, with thinly-veiled disgust. "What about her dad?"

Adrian shrugged. "Ignores her, mostly. Ignores everyone. Never seen a bloke so good at turning off. I s'pose he learned in self-defence, being married to Beryl. Anyway, it's been years since those two invaded us, and I want my bloody in-laws out of my house. But every time I suggest they go look at a flat of their own or something, Beryl has a pink fit about how they've got no money and if Siobhan and I turn them out, they'll end up living on the street, you know, the whole nine yards of it. The way I see it, Dr. Watson, that isn't my problem. They've both worked all their lives. How is it that they're so broke they need to cadge off us forever?"

"What did Siobhan think of you moving her parents along?" Dyer asked.

Adrian snorted. "Siobhan wants to adopt every stray cat and abandoned baby bird she sees," he said. "She wouldn't have it. She hated them living with us more than I did, but all her mum had to do is cry poor and Siobhan gave in. _Literally_ crying poor—Beryl turns the waterworks on whenever she doesn't get her own way. And then she started talking about how Brett and Sadie owe them money and won't pay it back."

"When did that start?" Sherlock asked.

"Dunno, maybe September?" Adrian shrugged. "I know Siobhan said something to Brett about it when she went down to see them for Maisie's birthday. I didn't hear exactly what Brett said, but it must've been 'no'. There were one or two rows over the phone. And then Beryl and Chris are going down there to confront them in person and demand their money back, and here's me following up behind to—"

Silence.

"To what?" Sherlock prompted him.

"To stop someone from getting killed, is what I was going to say," Adrian mumbled into his collar.

"And who did you think you were going to have to stop from murder?" Dyer asked. "'Beryl has one hell of a motive. Unfortunately, mate, you all do. I suggest you tell us everything you know about what the five of you got up to last week."


	15. Search and Rescue

For all that she was currently receiving the business end of Detective Inspector Lestrade's disgust, Beryl Holland was holding up well. Tearless, at least. Her primary concern was for Chris, who was to be interviewed separately. Lestrade had noted that concern. Possibly worried that she and Chris hadn't got their stories straight yet. All of the investigators had somewhat dismissed Chris so far, though the possibility of his being a hidden psychopath had once or twice crossed Lestrade's mind. By all accounts, he'd come in of his own free will and was sitting in the waiting room with a newspaper, as calm as you like, but that didn't mean he was going to stay that way. The community noticeboard—chock full of Missing Persons posters and Wanted notices—sometimes gave suspects the heebie-jeebies before they even entered the interview room. Even better, Jimmy and Jackie Monash were also in that waiting room, and if that didn't throw Chris off his game, nothing would. Lestrade had instructed the desk sergeant to keep an ear out for anything that sounded incriminating.

"So let's get this sequence of events in order, shall we?" He shuffled his paperwork. "Sadie's parents ask her for a loan, and because of some conditions her grandmother left, or some other reason, she said no. It was quite a lot of money. The only people I'd lend that kind of money to are my mother or my kids."

Beryl shrugged. She had both hands pressed against the table, as if she meant to push her chair out but couldn't summon the strength to.

"But you came to the rescue—for your son's in-laws."

"They weren't _just_ Brett's in-laws," she said snippishly. "Where do you think Brett and Sadie met in the first place? We're all four of us teachers, or were before Chris and I retired, anyway. Chris and Jackie worked together at Chalton High School."

"And did Brett and Sadie go to school together there?"

"No. It isn't our local school, and we sent Brett to St. Mark's; I can't remember where Sadie went. Chris and Jackie got to be friends, and we had a few family barbecues together one summer. Brett was… about seventeen, I think. The summer before he left school."

"So you had teaching in common, then. Much else?"

"My husband wasn't having an affair with Jackie Monash, if that's what you're implying, detective!"

Lestrade struggled to keep an even expression, but he was taken aback by something in Beryl's voice. She sounded like a general giving orders. So far as Beryl was concerned, Chris hadn't been having an affair with Jackie because she'd forbid it. And when Beryl forbid something, she expected to be obeyed. She had forbidden Brett...

"No," he said mildly. "I wasn't saying that. Just trying to get a picture of how your families all got along. So you mingled socially, and having kids that got on, you got on yourselves. Would you say you and Jackie were closer friends than Chris and Jimmy? Or was it that Chris was Jackie's friend and you were more Jimmy's, or what?"

She folded her arms. "We were just social," she said stubbornly. "All of us."

"Okay." Lestrade shuffled his paperwork. Beside him, he sensed that Donovan was fidgeting. "But then," he went on, "all that must've changed, because the Monashes went out to Kenya. Why'd they do that, exactly?"

"They both got positions at a school in Nairobi," she said. "St Paul's Academy, I think it was called. It was a good opportunity. After a few years they decided to reach out further, to the poorer children in the city, the ones who couldn't afford St Paul's' fees. So they started up the Monash School."

"That was humble of them," Donovan muttered, but Beryl either ignored her or didn't hear.

"That school was their pet project," she went on. "When it started, they were literally teaching the little ones out of a falling-down community hall. Just as they were getting the go-ahead to build a proper building with decent facilities for the children, they lost their funding."

"Funding from who?"

"A charity. Every Child Ahead."

And now this was beginning to make some sense. Every Child Ahead had just gone very publicly broke. It turned out their CEO had been appropriating from the coffers and was looking at spending a few years in a nice, comfortable cell.

"I admire people with conviction, and Jackie and Jimmy certainly had that," Beryl went on. "I didn't want to see their hard work go to waste."

"Really?"

 _"Really?"_ Beryl echoed. "Are you saying I'm lying about what happened?"

"No, I'm saying you're lying about _why_ it happened," Lestrade said. "You _might've_ had good intentions when you let Jackie and Jimmy Monash borrow your life savings, but I doubt that, Mrs. Holland, I really do. There's no way my ex's parents would have lent mine that much money just 'cause they're nice people, and they actually _are_ nice people." He paused for a moment, thinking back to when he'd first married Julie and they were living in a bedsit together in Easton. Julie's parents had been horrified—the Clarkes were solidly middle class, the Lestrades solidly not, despite the posh echoes of their surname. But either Tom and Carol Clarke hadn't offered to lend their daughter money for a better lifestyle, or Julie had refused an offer and never told her then-husband about it. He was still in occasional and amicable contact with Tom and Carol, now in their late seventies. They were, as he'd told Beryl, nice people, who had tried to remain neutral throughout the divorce process. But they really weren't the type to lend family even modest amounts of money.

"Well," Beryl said, bringing him back to the case in front of him. Her voice was calm, but there was a great, rolling tremor of outrage underneath it. "If you're so clever and know so much, why do you think we really did it, Detective?"

"We? Let's not try to throw your husband under the bus, Beryl," Donovan said. "I doubt he blows his nose without your permission. I don't think you were working together, either. I'll tell you why _I_ think you really did it. You like to keep a tight rein on your children, and when Brett finally grew a pair and got fed up with it, he moved his family down to Cornwall to get away from you. You had to think of a way to get him back under control."

"Yeah, nice work," Lestrade chipped in. "You certainly made a good go of it."

Beryl looked up, and for a moment, Lestrade saw something in her eyes that made him recoil in disgust. She really was, in some secret, vile way, pleased with her 'nice work.'

"You said you lent that money to the Monashes 'before Maisie was born'," Donovan went on. "Can you be more specific about that?"

"I don't have the exact date," she said tartly. Right from the beginning of the interview, it was clear that she despised Sergeant Donovan and considered her to be an unnecessary intrusion on her conversation with Lestrade. "It was the summer before Maisie was born, so 2014. July. Maybe early August."

"So it was obvious by then that Maisie was on the way," Donovan remarked. "Brett and Sadie had already moved down to Mousehole, and Siobhan was with them, and do you know what? I'm going to say she was probably keeping a really low profile. Would you agree with that?"

Beryl looked sulkily at her hands.

"That used to happen a bit back when I was a kid," Lestrade went on. "Somebody—somebody's sister, somebody's girlfriend—suddenly went on a trip to visit their aunt in London, or Wales, or wherever, and came back six months later looking like they'd been put through a wringer. And everybody asked her how her holiday was, pretending they didn't know she'd just been through probably the worst six months of her life."

"Yes," Beryl agreed snippily. "Yes, that happened when I was young, too."

"I've got to tell you, I never expected it to happen in the 2010s. But then, I'm not sure poor Siobhan had too many options, after Brett gave her a huge guilt trip and you sold her down the river. You knew Siobhan was pregnant, of course. And you knew how and why that happened. Like you said yourself. A mother always knows."

"I-"

"See, that's the bit I find _really_ disgusting, Mrs. Holland." Lestrade heard a little mutter from Donovan, a hint to tone it down a touch. He ignored it. "Your own daughter's been raped, she's pregnant, her husband's doing time, and you came to it like, 'how can I use this to my advantage? What can I get out of this?'"

"I did not. I-"

"You used the rape of _your own daughter_ to get her and Brett and Sadie indebted to you, prepared to give you anything you wanted. You didn't just move in with Siobhan; you and Chris took over her house and treated her like a doormat. She was too terrified you'd tell Adrian about the baby to ever tell you where to get off."

"I-"

"So then you started harassing Brett and Sadie to pay you back what you lent to the Monashes. You found out at Christmas that they'd spent their money—which you clearly thought was yours—on a yacht, and did it _ever_ piss you off. You had a row, and if I'm reading his character right, Brett told you to bugger off and leave his family alone."

"He would _never_ have said something like that to me!"

"But he _did,_ didn't he? And there was nothing you could do to stop him or discipline him—except threaten him. You told him that if he and Sadie didn't cough up fifty thousand pounds to repay you, and do it sharp, you'd tell Jackie and Jimmy that Maisie, strictly-speaking, wasn't their granddaughter. How would they know, otherwise? They've been in Kenya for years. What you didn't know until after you murdered Brett was this: Brett and Sadie _had_ no money. Chris thought she'd inherited over a million quid—it was less than half of that, and they'd made a few interesting financial decisions and already spent the money they _did_ inherit."

"I didn't murder Brett!" Beryl shrieked at him, with such force that she had to take a deep breath before she could continue. When she did, her words tumbled out in a disorganised rush. "I was… we came down and stayed in Paul... we... I was just going to... I mean, I never... I didn't even leave the King's Arms until eight o'clock on the morning of—on Friday morning…"

"Where did you go?"

"How dare you ask me that? I was completely wrong about you, Inspector Lestrade! You're _incredibly_ rude, and I don't want to talk to you anymore!"

~~o0o~~

It was after three o'clock before Dyer finally called the interview with Adrian to an end. In the intervening hours, he, Sherlock and John had employed every weapon in their interviewing arsenal, from deploying Good-Cop-Bad-Cop—changing sides where necessary—to asking him pointless minutiae about his trip down to Cornwall by car in the early hours of Friday morning. What kind of weather was it? Did he hit traffic anywhere? Was anyone awake at the King's Arms in the village of Paul—where the others had stayed on Wednesday and Thursday nights—when he'd arrived in the early hours of Friday morning?

All about as useful as a lighthouse in a bog. Adrian answered questions readily and thoroughly, but shed no light on the murder of Brett Holland, or even begin to speculate on where Sadie and Maisie were.

"Do you think he's telling the truth?" John asked Sherlock when the interview finally concluded and Dyer had taken Adrian up to the front desk to deal with some paperwork.

"There's two kinds of telling the truth," Sherlock reminded him, exchanging a look across the room with Dyer and leading John toward the double glass doors that led outside.

John waited for an elaboration. None came.

By this time they'd stepped out into the freezing afternoon. After scattered sunshine that morning, heavy clouds had rolled in over the town, and flocks of agitated gulls swirled through the car park, swarming a nearby skip bin and squabbling loudly over the contents. There seemed to be few people about, under the conditions. Across the street, a bedraggled girl in a red coat struggled with a push-chair. No actual child was visible, but the engraged screams of one echoed all the way over to them, and John idly wondered how Molly and Charlie were getting on in Newlyn. Hopefully, Molly would have hit one or two antique shops and come back with one or two of the miniature tea sets she adored, and Charlie would be so content and exhausted she'd sleep straight through the night for a change.

As he was considering sending Molly a text asking what she was up to, he heard a car door slam. He looked up just as Lestrade got out of a car parked across the street and, after barely glancing each way in case of oncoming traffic, made his way over.

"Thought you'd gone home ages ago," he said instead of saying hello. "But I'm glad I've got you on hand and not on the phone. Beryl's sticking to her story." He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and glanced dubiously up a the clouds looming overhead. "She's halfway admitted that she mightn't have been in London on the day Brett was murdered, but we already know that, and I think she knows our evidence is circumstancial. Then she pitched a fit with me and decided she wasn't saying anything more, not even when Donovan pulled the 'us girls' routine. How'd you go with Adrian?"

"I was right about Ethan," Sherlock said, lighting a cigarette.

"What I don't get is, how Adrian didn't notice Siobhan had given birth." Lestrade took Sherlock's offered lighter and lit his own cigarette. "What is he, thick or blind? Julie looked like she'd been mauled by a tiger four months after she had Hayley."

"I'm seeing why you're divorced now," John muttered.

"Stretch marks, as well as changes in breast size and shape, can both be attributed to weight gain," Sherlock said. "And Siobhan gained weight while Adrian was in prison, partly because of her pregnancy and partly, I think, as a subconscious defensive response to her rape trauma. By the time Adrian was released, Siobhan was well over her post-partum period, so why would he jump to the conclusion that she'd given birth?"

"Yeah, well. The months where she wouldn't visit him in prison didn't clue him in?"

"Apparently not. Occam's razor at work: it was more plausible that she had emotional difficulty seeing him in prison than that she was trying to hide a pregnancy. All riddles are simple, once you see the solution."

"See, the problem I have with your solution is this," Lestrade said, "it still doesn't solve what happened to Sadie and Maisie, and now nobody and everybody's got a reason to want the Hollands dead." He leaned against the low stone wall and took another drag of his cigarette. "If Chris and Beryl were blackmailing Brett and Sadie, to the point where they were chasing them all over the country for the money… well, maybe they finally snapped and decided the only way they were going to get that money is by killing Brett," he said. "I honestly wouldn't put it past Beryl—control freak with a definite nasty side to her. But then, Sadie could have wanted out and killed her husband, then gone to ground with their daughter. They could be on the other side of the world by now, for all we know. Then we've got Siobhan, who could have changed her mind and decided she wanted Maisie back, killed Brett and Sadie, and hidden Maisie somewhere."

"We can safely rule that out," Sherlock said. "Siobhan cares about Maisie, even if she didn't raise her. She would never attempt suicide if she was the only person who knew where Maisie was. But there are other possibilities—that Siobhan and Adrian are in this together, that Adrian already knew about Maisie's adoption and fought with Brett about it. Very unlikely, because of Adrian's pupils."

"His pupils?"

"When I reached the punchline about Maisie being Siobhan's child, they immediately dilated. Surprise and uncertainty. There are ways to consciously dilate one's pupils—actors avail themselves of such techniques—but unless Adrian is a full-blown psychopath, has a secret career onstage at the West End, or both, it was involuntary."

"He did set his brother on fire," Lestrade pointed out.

"For raping his wife at knifepoint. If that's what makes a man a psychopath, they're alarmingly common."

"Which leaves us with one Derrick Rice." Lestrade stubbed out his cigarette under one heel. "And if you ask me, while Beryl's the mother from hell and was clearly here to punish Brett and Siobhan for spending their own money…"

He was interrupted by the sudden trill of his phone. With an apologetic glance at Sherlock, he pulled it out of his pocket and answered it with his surname, a sure indication it wasn't Mel with wedding information or Hayley wanting to know why Jake wasn't answering his texts. He wandered away toward the carpark, but all Sherlock and John could hear from his side was a vague progression of noises that indicated he was paying attention to the caller. After a few minutes, he hung up and returned to them.

"The pathologist's had a look at Brett's head," he said on the exhale. "It was a single blow to the right-hand side of the skull. Front. So he was facing whoever did it."

"You're absolutely certain?" Sherlock was suddenly on the alert.

"Yep. Or at least, the pathologist is. Just above his right eye and temple. It smashed the skull just over his brow and caused a massive brain haemorrhage. They told me said death would have occurred within five minutes."

John flinched. Five minutes was a long time, so far as dying of a massive head injury went.

"At first we were thinking a left-handed assailant, but it seems more likely that he was hit on the backswing," Lestrade was saying. "Pathologist reckons it was an instrument with a handle and a large, flat surface area, like a mallet or an oar."

"And he was definitely hit only once?"

Lestrade nodded. "And there were no marks on his hands or forearms indicating he put them up to defend himself, either, so it would have all happened really quickly. You'd have to be incredibly strong to kill someone with a single blow like that—I don't think Beryl, Chris _or_ Siobhan could have done that, and neither could our old backup plan, Brian Crouch. Derrick Rice definitely could, though."

John turned to Sherlock, intending to ask him if he agreed and what they should do next, but both questions died on his lips. Sherlock had gone white.

"Sherlock?" he ventured, honestly wondering for a moment if he needed to sit him down. "You okay?"

"He lied to us," Sherlock said slowly. His voice sounded hollow and too even, as if he were talking in his sleep. "I didn't recognise it at the time, but it was a definite, cold-blooded lie."

"What was?" John exchanged a concerned glance with Lestrade, who was already dialling something into his phone.

"He said Brett had only got into sailing as a hobby after they moved to Cornwall, which was three years ago. But the man in the corner shop told us that the entire _family_ were known for loving the water and having enough skill to pilot a small boat. If we look at which one of them is more likely to be lying…"

"Derrick," John muttered. "Why would he tell a lie like that, though?"

"I don't know, but when small lies are told, larger ones follow. Do you remember how anxious he was to tell us about his own boat? _The Lady Marlborough._ He even started to go into details about her size and level of luxury. I stopped him. But if I hadn't interrupted, he probably would have described her from the keel up. And John, _only lies have unnecessary detail…"_

"But the Cornwall force checked that out," John objected. "Confiscated the _Lady Marlborough,_ went through it with a fine-toothed comb."

"Yes. But what if…" Sherlock trailed off. A few feet away, Lestrade had the phone to his ear and was pacing around.

"Derrick," he said pleasantly. "Hi, it's Greg Lestrade."

John glanced at Sherlock again, barely daring to breathe.

"… Yeah. Yeah, I know. Hey, listen, I was wondering if I'd be able to pop in and see you at the hotel this evening, say, an hour's time…? Nah, mate. Just want to clear a couple of details up about what Brett and Sadie were like, nothing official. You can show me what the locals drink around here… yeah, well, what my bosses don't know won't hurt them, will it?"

There was a long pause. Lestrade met Sherlock's gaze as he waited.

"Great," he finally said. "Don't dress for dinner or anything, I look like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards…" He gave a light chuckle. "Great. See you then. Bye." He hung up the phone, looked at it for a few seconds, then took a deep breath. "Says he's going to meet me at the Old Coastguard in an hour," he said.

"And?"

"And he won't. You can always tell from the tone of voice. How far do you—"

"Not far." Sherlock had his own phone out and was now texting at lightning speed.

* * *

_I urgently need the current co-ordinates of phone IMEI 990000862471854 - S_

\- Today 3:17pm

* * *

_50.0896279, -5.546070600000007. Paul, Penzance. - M_

\- Today 3:19pm

* * *

_Send me the program you're using? - S_

\- Today 3:20pm

* * *

**Downloading…**

\- Today 3:21pm

* * *

_Last Google search from that phone? - S_

\- Today 3:22pm

* * *

_"Epilim over the counter" 9:44am today. - M_

\- Today 3:24pm

* * *

"Sadie Holland's still alive," Sherlock said, putting his phone in his pocket. "Probably Maisie as well. And if Derrick Rice keeps his phone on him, he's going to lead us straight to them."


	16. Accident

By the time Lestrade emerged from the police station with Donovan and Dyer, he found both Sherlock and John busy with their phones. John was sitting on the low brick wall telling someone—obviously Molly—to stay where they were until he called back. Sherlock was pacing around restlessly, staring at his phone screen. He swiped once or twice at it with one fingertip.

"Anything doing?" Lestrade asked him.

Sherlock sucked in a breath through his teeth. "That phone hasn't moved in ten minutes," he said, without even looking up from the screen. "The co-ordinates place it by the side of the road next to the Church of Christ in Paul. Mycroft is never wrong. Your phone call, Lestrade, prompted Rice to drop the phone and run."

"Shit." Donovan dropped her shoulders and looked helplessly at Dyer.

"That's not a bad thing." Sherlock sounded almost serene, since the only thing he really feared was doubt. "Certainly not for Sadie, who, judging by his choice of Google search, is alive and having an alarming amount of seizures without her medication. Or at least, she was at nine o'clock this morning."

John terminated the call with an absent _love you_ and hung up, looking at the darkened screen for a second before putting it in his pocket and looking up at Sherlock expectantly.

"What do you want me to do, Sherlock?" Lestrade asked him quietly.

"Contact McMannis," Sherlock said. "Tell him to get officers to check every shed, every barn, every stable, every toilet block between here and Paul."

"You think he's got them here?" Dyer ventured.

"'Here' or close enough. That's why he came back to Mousehole but wasn't interested in the search—he knew where they were and couldn't be away from Sadie for too long. Sadie, at least, didn't starve or dehydrate in the two days he was in London, which indicates she wasn't gagged and probably wasn't tied up. Imprisoned somewhere remote or seldom-travelled; somewhere nobody could hear her call for help." He screwed his eyes shut, and Lestrade wondered if something else had just passed through his mind—a memory of being imprisoned in the Eccles Rowing Club headquarters, bleeding and half-conscious.

"Donovan," Sherlock said. "Do you remember what the woman in the fish and chip shop told us about the Ship Inn?"

"… Her cousin. She said her cousin ran it. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Brian Crouch," Sherlock said. "Yes, we know that he was in the area poaching for the aquarium. But why? Why _here,_ as if there weren't numerous places he could have been, ones much closer to London? He said himself that he wasn't expecting to net a shark in these waters so late in the season. You and I had to make up a charade as an excuse to be in the area, but what was _his_ excuse?"

"Visiting friends or family. Who, though?"

Sherlock now looked at John. "Someone I pointed out was all but ready to accuse _us_ of the murder," he said. "He runs the corner shop on the promenade. A perfect view to what happened in the early hours of Friday morning. We need to speak with him. Now."

* * *

Lestrade glanced in the car's rear-view mirror to check that Donovan and Dyer were still following behind in their own car. He could practically feel John's restless energy from the back seat, but Sherlock, seated beside him, hadn't said a word since they'd got in. He was used to following Sherlock's orders, but this one couldn't go through without questioning.

"Okay," he said, slowing down to give way at a stop sign. "I don't understand."

"The injury changes everything. Brett Holland's death was an accident."

"Oh, bollocks." Lestrade turned the car so violently onto the main road that he heard John hiss in protest. "Someone dismembered him with an _axe-_ _"_

"Clearly dismembering Brett and abducting his wife and child wasn't _an accident,_ but we were on the right track to begin with and derailed by the fact that the _Marie Celeste_ was in pristine condition, and therefore the evidence pointed to a planned crime," Sherlock said. "In reality, what we were looking at was two completely _different_ crimes—the scuttling of the _Marie Celeste_ for insurance and the manslaughter of Brett Holland."

Lestrade glanced at him. "So they _were_ scuttling it? But why-"

"Adrian's having gone to prison for an 'insurance job' put the idea of scuttling the _Marie_ _Celeste_ in Brett's mind, but he was neither stupid nor cruel enough to ask Adrian to repeat a crime he'd been imprisoned for. He asked his best friend, Derrick—a man he trusted."

"And that's why Derrick moved down here?"

"Precisely. He had no other reason to. It was probably what he and Beryl were arguing about in the corner shop the day before Brett was killed. Beryl had found Brett and Sadie, and she was furious—with them, and with Derrick Rice for helping them."

"That argument Rose said she heard Sadie having with Derrick," John said. "At his place, a day or two before the murder-"

"Yes. They made a plan that night to recover the fifty thousand pounds Beryl and Chris wanted. On the morning of the murder, Rice removed the Hollands from their boat to the safety of his, with a mind of wrecking the _Marie Celeste,_ probably by damaging the hull. That's why everything was set up as if the couple had been suddenly interrupted - if they'd struck an object, that's exactly what would have happened. Rice's mistake was the boat _didn_ _'_ _t_ sink. Instead, a fight broke out before the finishing touches were made. It's likely Brett confronted Derrick on his feelings for Sadie, but his motive isn't important. Either way, the fight ended when Derrick lost his temper and killed Brett by hitting him with an oar."

"But wait," John broke in again. "They searched the _Lady Marlborough._ If that's where Brett was killed, how come nothing turned up with forensics?"

"Because he wasn't killed on the _Lady Marlborough._ Remember, Derrick seemed almost desperate to volunteer the information that he'd been on the _Lady Marlborough_ when he found the _Marie Celeste._ I think it's quite likely that there's a second boat, unregistered, nondescript enough that nobody communicated with forensics that the boat registered to Derrick Rice, the one they were searching, wasn't even the one he'd used on that day. Why would anyone doubt him? It was the only boat registered to him."

Lestrade was now visibly puzzling this out. "So wait, you're telling us that when the Cornwall water police showed up, Derrick had Sadie and Maisie _right there_ in the hull?"

"No. He couldn't guarantee that Maisie would be quiet—it's possible to scream through a gag, and she's too young to stay quiet on command, no matter what threat he made. Brett was killed at least two or three hours before we all thought, giving Rice enough time to dismember and dump his body, bring Sadie and Maisie to shore, hide them somewhere, take the _Lady Marlborough_ back out to the _Marie Celeste_ and call the police, reporting the occupants were missing."

"I guess that explains why sharks were hanging around that morning," John muttered. "Someone washing blood off in the ocean would do it."

"But what about the radio?" Lestrade wanted to know. "They had proof that Brett Holland made radio contact at—"

"No. They recorded that _someone_ made radio contact shortly after seven-thirty that morning. They have no way of proving who it was. It was almost certainly Derrick, trying to establish proof that Brett was still alive and that he'd therefore had neither time nor opportunity to kill him."

Lestrade swore to himself. He should have known. He did know. Justin Flemming and the fake phone call that would have given him an alibi if it hadn't been impossible.

"We need to talk to people," Sherlock was saying. "Fast. Lestrade, get McMannis to send detectives to talk to Derrick's neighbour Rose, ask her if she saw anything unusual on Friday morning."

"What did she see?"

"She saw Rice returning to the house sometime in the early hours of the morning, before the Cornwall force was notified there was something wrong. Details—we need details."

* * *

Lestrade dropped Sherlock and John off close to the corner shop, before proceeding up to make enquiries at the Ship Inn with Donovan and Dyer.

"Do you think they'll get anywhere?" John asked as he followed Sherlock across the cobblestoned street toward the shop.

"Probably not," Sherlock said. "The reception desk there faces inland. At this time of year, anyone from the Ship Inn who saw anything had to be looking for it."

"Okay." John sounded resigned. He knew better than to ask if anyone at the Ship Inn had a reason to be looking out for Derrick Rice.

The proprietor of the corner shop was still diligently at his post, serving a bedraggled-looking blonde woman with a little boy on one hip. Sherlock barged his way through the shop door, setting the door wind-chimes clanking in protest. with John at his heels. One glance, and Sherlock discounted the man's customer. _Local. Young child, so was possibly awake at the time of the murder on Friday morning, but there_ _'_ _s no sign of salt or wind damage in her hair, which suggests she lives in one of the streets further away from the ocean._ "Get out," he said to her.

"What?"

"Sorry," John said, going back over to the door and holding it open for her to go through. "Nothing personal, but something's come up. We're the police. Sort of."

The woman stopped in the doorway, glancing back over her shoulder at the man behind the counter. "The police?" she echoed. "Is this about that murder…?"

"I'm afraid I really can't say. Please, just… we're in a hurry; come on." John beckoned her out and closed the door behind her. Sherlock was now facing off the unimpressed proprietor.

"Your name," he demanded. "And don't lie. Too many people in this village can contradict you, and so can a quick police check."

The man chewed the inside of one cheek for a second. "Crouch," he said. "Graham Crouch."

"In the early hours of last Friday morning, Mr. Crouch," Sherlock said, "your cousin Brian… cousin? Or is he your brother?"

"Cousin," Graham muttered.

"He was about a mile offshore with some of his colleagues from the Metropolitan Aquarium, doing a nice bit of poaching. Since you were here preparing to open the shop, you saw everyone who came and went that morning. Your desire to protect Brian's racket is admirable, but your willingness to conceal evidence of a murder isn't."

"I didn't see any murder!"

"No. That took place off-shore, and I don't think even Brian would have seen or heard anything he understood. What you _did_ see is someone coming in from the water, probably between about six and seven o'clock in the morning. Tell us everything. Now."

"There's nothing to tell you," Graham protested. "You don't reckon if I'd seen someone doing something really dodgy I'd have said something? That bloke of Rice. He came onshore about half-six. Moored the boat, got into a car, and left. I didn't see what direction. You can only get to the main road by the ramp anyway."

"Nobody else with him?"

"Not a soul."

"Was he carrying anything?"

Crouch considered. "Something over one shoulder," he said. "A bag. I don't know what colour—it was dark. Didn't look heavy. It certainly didn't have a bloody body in it!"

"What do you know about-"

"Sherlock," John said.

Sherlock possessed a prodigious talent for ignoring John's admonitions, to the point where he genuinely didn't register some of them. Other times, though, a single word stopped him dead in his tracks. Turning around, he saw that John was standing vigilant near the windows looking out onto the marina. He rushed over to him.

"What? What is it?"

John didn't answer, but put his hand against the windowpane. The only thing moving out in the darkness was a small boat, lights dimmed, making its way out to open sea.

~~o0o~~

Sherlock scrambled for the door, pushing it open with both hands and spilling out onto the cobblestoned road, breath coming in sharp puffs of vapour. He crossed the road, not bothering to check either for oncoming traffic or for John behind him, and legged up onto the plinth of a Great War cenotaph for a better view of the dark harbour.

"It's him, isn't it." John, down beside the plinth by this time, was still following the progress of the little boat, one hand shading his eyes, as if out of long habit.

"Nobody else has a reason to leave the harbour in a blacked-out boat." Sherlock scrambled down onto the grass again. "Of course it's him."

The marina was kept sheltered from the sea by the same stone seawall that Donovan and Dyer had walked along to view the suitcase containing Brett Holland's body, and any boat passing in or out of it had to navigate the gap between the north end of the cove and the wall. There was no chance of a pursuit by sea; in his more confident moments Sherlock might have attempted to hijack one of the boats moored in the marina, but there wasn't time.

He set off instead, feet pounding on stone, breath bursting out of his lungs, and reached the end of the sea wall a couple of seconds after Rice's boat reached the point of open sea. There was nothing else to be done but jump for it.

Sherlock dropped onto the narrow little foredeck, going over hard on one ankle. He drew in a sharp breath through his teeth, but nothing in his ankle snapped; as he struggled to his feet a clatter behind him indicated John had also successfully made the jump from the sea wall.

"Derrick," Sherlock said, holding both arms up, palms out. "Stop. It's over."

Rice was only a few feet away at the cockpit, staring him down like a feral cat ready to strike.

"You didn't really think you were going to hide Sadie and Maisie forever?" Sherlock took a second to get his breath back. "We know it was an accident, Derrick. We-"

Rice ducked down to the vestibule at his feet, and before he could react, Sherlock heard a heavy _click_ over his left shoulder.

"Stand up," John barked. "Now. Hands where I can see them."

In the silence that followed, Sherlock could hear his pulse thudding.

"Don't shoot me," he heard, but it was barely above a whisper. "I… I can't put my hands up…"

Rice staggered to his feet. Peering into the darkness, Sherlock expected to see a gun or a knife in his hands; perhaps the oar that had taken Brett Holland's life or the utility hatchet he'd used to dismember his still-warm body. But the only weapon Derrick Rice held was a limp, white-faced toddler.


	17. Salt

"Derrick," Sherlock heard John say over his shoulder. "Tell me that baby's alive."

Derrick looked down at the little girl, but flicked his tongue over his lips and made no reply. Maisie's head hung back limply against his arm, her eyes shut. Sherlock had a sudden memory: _If Sadie and Maisie are dead, this weather won't be bothering them at all…_

"Take your first two fingers and hold them under her jaw, Derrick," John was saying. "Tell me she's got a pulse."

John could shoot Derrick Rice dead. If Maisie was dead, Sherlock knew he would. And that was going to make for a messy court case, with less than ideal timing for the Watson family. "John," he said. "Sadie's down in the cabin somewhere. Find her. Find her and help her."

John didn't move.

"I said _go,_ John."

Finally, Sherlock heard a light clunking sound as John put the gun back into his belt. He cleared his throat, passed behind Sherlock to the galley stairs and descended out of sight. Sherlock watched him edge out of the corner of his eye, keeping his own gaze on Derrick Rice.

"You have nerves of steel," he remarked finally, relaxing his shoulders. He thought briefly about folding down his coat collar, then decided against it: too obvious a ploy.

"Nerves…?" Derrick looked at him blankly.

"Keeping yourself together, knowing what you knew the whole time. Having seen what you saw." Sherlock left off: _doing what you did._ Even if the charges against Derrick Rice were manslaughter, a jury was going to have a hard time swallowing that he then accidentally dismembered his best friend's body with an axe. Derrick didn't need to know that. He needed to think he had something to lose. "In another world," he went on, "I daresay you'd have made a good police officer."

 _Police officer._ Lestrade and the others would have barely had time to make it to the Ship Inn before he and John had left the shop. All it would take was just one of them to glance back over their shoulder, and they would see what was going on. To his right, Sherlock heard John's voice, muffled by the deck: _Sadie… Sadie, can you hear me…?_

"How is she?" he called out, for Derrick's benefit rather than his own. If Sadie were either dead or fully conscious, John wouldn't be trying to rouse her.

"Alive," John said. "Just."

"Derrick." Sherlock turned back to him, trying to keep his voice steady. It wasn't easy; the night breeze was frigid. "Derrick, listen to me, and listen carefully. We know killing Brett was an accident, and anyone can tell that you love Sadie. Because you love her, you're going to have to do the best thing for her. Give yourself up. Let us take Sadie and Maisie to hospital."

The boat rolled in the swell and Derrick backed up, shifting Maisie's weight in his arms. Her head smacked against the crook of his arm. She did not flinch, but Derrick did.

"It's over," Sherlock said. "There's nowhere you can take Sadie and Maisie where they'll be looked after."

Where _had_ Derrick been trying to take them, anyway? Ireland? France? Not important, under the current circumstances. It was all too likely that Derrick didn't even know.

"You'd be apprehended the second you stepped on shore, and by then it might be too late to save them anyhow. They wouldn't last the journey…" Sherlock braced against the roll of the boat, grabbing onto the nearby guard rail at the last second, and glanced at Maisie again. She was so close. Almost arm's length away. Close enough to snatch.

Behind him, somewhere up near the main road, he heard a hoarse male shout, then the flap of heavy running footsteps.

"It's clear you're not familiar with me and my work," he said to Derrick, in tones that aimed to sound disappointed. "But I'll give you an insight, if you like: I can quote the period table in order, but I can't tell you how a mother might feel about her child. I rarely guess, but in this case, I have to: I'm going to guess that if there's anything Sadie would be begging you to do right now, it's to save her baby."

_"_ _Sherlock!"_

Sherlock barely glanced over his shoulder: Jake Dyer. He'd made it first to the end of the sea wall, with Donovan and Lestrade almost on his heels. But the boat had drifted wide with the wind and undertow, and there was no way Dyer could make that jump now, leaving him dithering on the edge.

"Derrick," Sherlock continued. "Give Maisie to me."

"So you can shoot me?" Derrick's voice cracked.

Sherlock half-smiled. "I'm disappointed," he said. "You should know more about me. I'm never armed. That's John's job." _And please, God, don't let it be Lestrade's._ Greg had a legally licensed Glock 21; Mycroft had made sure of that long ago. But he rarely brought it, even on a case, and by his own admission had only shot at someone once since 1996. "Manslaughter," he went on. "You'll do as little as five years, if recent sentences for similar offences are anything to go by." He ignored the implication that Derrick would also be charged with kidnapping, perverting the course of an investigation, and half a dozen more crimes at the least. "Murdering a toddler, on the other hand," he said, " _that_ will get you a file marked Not Eligible for Parole. And I doubt you'll survive long in prison. I assume you know what prison inmates do to men who hurt children."

Behind him, Sherlock heard Sally Donovan on the phone: _Bloody hurry up._ McMannis and Cornwall's finest were on their way.

"How did you know?" Derrick asked him. "How did you know it was me?"

Sherlock did not smile. "I had my suspicions from the first time we met," he said. "Lestrade told you Brett was dead, and you said these words exactly: 'How can you know that? I don't know anything about that.' It was more or less a confession that you killed him. But the way you reacted when I accused you of raping and murdering Sadie told me that you hadn't. Curling up on the floor and slow-breathing is standard operating procedure for a man who was at one time been in anger management counselling…"

Derrick's right hand moved to his pocket, and in the lights from the main road, Sherlock caught a metallic glint. His heart jackhammered. He'd ordered John away, and the only three Metropolitan detectives who halfway respected him were too far away to help him navigate this one. A careless word was all it would take.

"What are you going to do with that?" he asked Derrick.

No answer. Expected. Derrick Rice hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to do with the knife he held – a utility knife, if the glimpse Sherlock had got of it had told him correctly. Something more suited to cutting twine and cable than human skin.

"Are you married, Mr. Holmes?" Derrick asked him.

"No."

"Divorced?"

"No. Marriage really isn't my area." Sherlock let out a breath. "You… wanted to marry Sadie?"

No answer, which was an answer.

"It must have been difficult for you," Sherlock said. "To see Brett and Sadie so happy…"

"They weren't happy," Derrick snarled. "Brett told me once, he goes, 'the people at the fertility clinic have done five million tests and they don't know why we can't have kids'."

"And it must have occurred to you," Sherlock said, "that you and Sadie might be able to have children together."

"They were wrong for each other, Mr. Holmes. Oil and water. And Sadie's the one coming to me, crying on my shoulder when Brett's being an arse. Can you believe that? Coming to me to cry because she'd fucked up her life, when she could have had me instead and been happy?"

Quickly, Sherlock rifled through a number of responses to this. All of them were either going to anger Derrick, whose grasp on his temper was so weak; all of them were going to prolong the stand-off and delay Sadie and Maisie getting the help they needed. Maisie had still shown no signs of life. Below deck, Sadie was making a low retching sound.

"John?" he called out.

"She's still seizing," was the terse response. "Four minutes now. I can't do anything until it stops."

Hearing this, Derrick swallowed hard, clutching the limp toddler against his chest.

"Derrick," Sherlock tried again. "Please. Please give Maisie to me."

For a few seconds there was no sound but the lapping of waves against the hull and the eerie rasps of Sadie Holland below deck. Then, holding her out in his arms like a sacrificial offering, Derrick Rice lay Maisie on the deck at his feet. But as he straightened up, Sherlock caught again that glimpse of metal in his hand.

"No-"

Sherlock lunged forward, but it was too late. Derrick staggered back a step, one hand at the gaping, bleeding wound across his throat, and went over the deck railing. There was a muffled splash.

And then another. Sherlock glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Lestrade was no longer standing on the sea wall.

He caught Maisie up in his arms, checking for her pulse the way John had instructed Derrick. With the rocking of the ship and the beating of his own heart, it was difficult to say if she was still alive. John appeared again at the head of the gallery stairs.

"What-"

"In there," Sherlock, struggling under Maisie's dead-weight on one shoulder, pointed to the dark water. There was now no sign of anyone in it.

* * *

"Come on, come on," Donovan muttered, scanning the water as well as she could with the wind whipping her hair into her eyes. Derrick Rice had just used a kid as a human shield, so he could drown or bleed to death for all she cared. But the best man she knew had just jumped in after him, barely remembering to ditch his shoes and jacket before he did. And, as far as she could see, he hadn't surfaced anywhere. "Come on," she said. "Where the fuck are you?"

Dyer laid one hand on her arm. "If I call-"

"Backup's not going to get here any faster if you keep ringing them," she snapped at him. For a detective, Dyer could be remarkably thick sometimes. She reached down and started pulling at the laces of her boots. "Tell me if you see him," she said. "Look everywhere-"

She heard a heavy splash, much closer to hand than expected. Looking up, she saw that Dyer had disappeared from beside her.

_Shit._

She yanked off her boots, then, at the last second, remembered to do the same with her jacket before launching herself off the sea wall, plummeting feet-first, legs pumping, until the water stung like acid and the darkness flooded in.

She kicked down, seeking purchase, but her feet touched nothing. Now only guessing which way the surface and the sky were, she frog-stroked her way up until her head broke the surface and the freezing night air slapped her in the face. Looking around, she could only make out the lights on the promenade and a few dimmer ones that marked the outline of the boat. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she could see John on the deck, crouched over something. The little girl, Maisie. Sherlock was standing at the rail, looking out into the dark water.

"Where is he?" she called to him, voice shrill as the cold seized her chest. She'd meant Lestrade; but after a second she realised she had no idea where Dyer was, either. Sherlock did not respond for a few seconds; then he held one arm out, pointing further out to sea. She could dimly make out Lestrade, at least, treading water against the outgoing tide, clutching Derrick Rice across his chest with one arm. Derrick was alive and literally kicking, grasping, scratching against Lestrade, who seemed to be trying to tend his throat with his free hand. She submerged and swam over, until she was close enough that Derrick, purposely or not, rammed one elbow into her cheek. She grasped at his arm and held it down under the water; at the same time she curled one leg up and pulled off her sock, then used it to staunch the bleeding wound on Derrick's throat. He growled at her – a reassuring sound, since he couldn't have made it if it'd severed his vocal cords or carotid artery.

_Stupid prick can't even off himself properly._

"Hey," she barked at him. "Cut it out or I'll break both your arms. And stay with it. I didn't just jump into the Atlantic so you could bloody die on me."

Another growling noise, but whether it was cold or blood loss, Derrick was winding down like a child's toy. His fingers, trying to pry Lestrade's arm off his chest, were clumsy and weak.

"Donovan," Lestrade got out through chattering teeth. "Dyer. Where is he?"

But she was already looking around for Dyer, as well as she could in the darkness, with the salt sea burning her eyes. No sign of him.

"Jake!"

How far could he have gone? He'd jumped in at the same spot she had, and every Metropolitan detective had to prove themselves a competent swimmer.

And then she remembered. Marvin the Mako shark, drawn by the smell of human blood, had been caught less than a week ago in Cornish waters. These waters.


	18. The Sirens

"Take the baby," John demanded, lifting Maisie and putting her into Sherlock's arms whether he wanted her or not. It took a dazed second for Sherlock to realise why. From below deck, he could no longer hear Sadie's ragged breathing.

"What-"

"Hypothermic." John was already halfway down the galley stairs. Sherlock followed him to the top of the shaft. "But she's breathing and she's got a pulse, so unless that changes you don't need to resuscitate her-"

"But what do I do with her?"

"Sherlock, I'm about to be _really, really busy,_ so please, use your common sense." Looking down the ladder into the galley, Sherlock saw that John was kneeling over something. Someone. "Her clothes are wet," he said over his shoulder. "Get them off her. Get her warm."

Somewhere out in the darkness, Donovan was shouting for Dyer. Only she was calling him _Jake._ And he wasn't answering.

"Dyer," tumbled out of Sherlock's mouth. "They can't find him-"

"I can't do anything about that now." John was taking Sadie's pulse at the neck and fumbling to get his jacket off to free his arms. "There's help on the way. You just keep that kid warm, okay?"

"But-"

"Sherlock, Dyer's got two working arms and legs and he went into the water voluntarily. You're holding a two-year-old who's in a hypothermic coma. Dyer _can't be your priority right now_."

With numb fingers, Sherlock stripped Maisie of her wet, filthy clothes. As he did so, he heard a sickening _crack_ from down in the cabin. John was attempting chest compressions, and had just broken at least two of Sadie Holland's ribs. He suddenly wondered, for the first time since meeting him, whether people had died because the world held only one John Watson.

Maisie was still unconscious. His instinct was to get her out of the freezing night air; but with Sadie sprawled out on the cabin floor and John trying to resuscitate her, there was no room to take her down there. He took off his coat, jacket and shirt, bundled Maisie close to his chest, and awkwardly put them on again with his free hand. Her skin was icy against his, and her head flopped against his shoulder like a rag doll's. He could still dimly see Lestrade, Donovan and Derrick huddled together in the water a few dozen yards off, but it was not his imagination—they were further away now. The tide was on its way out.

Then, from the port bow, he heard a splash. Still clutching Maisie, he rushed over, peering down at the vague, sopping form flailing and gasping at the waterline.

"Dyer?"

Donovan called out again. Sherlock ignored her. So far, both she and Lestrade had the common sense not to swim against the tide to find their missing constable. If they knew where he was, Sherlock was sure that Donovan would try. Exhausted swimmers drowned.

Dyer was scrabbling for purchase against the fibreglass hull, pressed against it by the undertow. The swell broke over his head. Sherlock, cradling Maisie against him with his free arm, found the mooring rope and threw it over. "Hold that," he said. "Can you hold it?"

Dyer gripped it and started tying it around one wrist. The swell slapped him in the face, leaving him gasping. "The rope," he puffed. "How long is it?"

Sherlock glanced back at the coil on the deck. "Forty feet," he said. "Maybe fifty. But you-"

It was too late. Dyer had submerged again, and this time it was deliberate. The line began to pull, and Sherlock, still holding onto the unconscious baby, was left waiting in agony until he dimly saw Dyer remerge a few feet away from Donovan.

He counted out his heartbeats against the crash of waves on the dwindling shoreline.

In his arms, Maisie suddenly stirred and made a shallow barking sound. He tilted her forward, looking at her face; she was screwing her swollen eyes up and puffing breaths through her mouth.

"Come on," he muttered, laying her freezing little body against his shoulder and patting her back, the way he'd seen both John and Molly tend their daughter a thousand times. He hadn't the faintest idea if it was doing anything to help, but surely it wasn't doing anything to hurt. He pulled her forward to look at her face again when he heard Lestrade's voice out on the water, hoarse and cross.

"Not me," he was saying. "Her."

A choked protest from Donovan. "Boss-"

"Nicely spotted. Her, Dyer."

For a moment, Sherlock fought off a fit of hysterical giggling. The Met's finest, treading water in the Atlantic, bickering over which one of them deserved the mooring rope. He heard a slapping noise, and a pale spray of water flared up between Lestrade and Donovan, very near Derrick Rice's head. "Hey," Lestrade barked. "Bite me again and you'll bloody know it!"

"I'll pull you in," Sherlock called, stooping awkwardly under Maisie's deadweight to pick up the rope again. Maisie coughed into his chest, a full-bodied shudder followed by a whooping intake of breath. It was echoed down in the cabin, where John was still trying to resuscitate Sadie. In between breaths, Sherlock could hear John muttering _Come on, Sadie…_

For a second, Sherlock thought he caught a high-pitched moan in response. But it wasn't Sadie; it was the sirens of an ambulance rounding the northern corner of the promenade and winging in a heavy curve toward the marina. Red and blue lights flashed out from the shore. Maisie bunched her tiny hands into fists and set up a gurgling cry.

* * *

For reasons beyond the comprehension of Sherlock Holmes, McMannis and the rest of the Cornwall officers on the scene weren't particularly interested in hearing the details on how Sherlock Holmes had solved the mystery of the _Marie Celeste._ Two ambulances left the scene almost immediately, with Sadie and Maisie inside them, while they waited an extra two minutes for a third to arrive and tend to Derrick Rice. So far as Sherlock's observations went, he'd gone into the ambulance both alive and conscious. Like many self-inflicted throat wounds, his had been barely deeper than superficial. There had been, he told McMannis, no real reason for all three Met detectives to jump in the freezing Atlantic after him.

Behind him, one police officer in uniform called out to another. He looked over his shoulder, then went back to another ambulance, which had arrived in the last few minutes. There, Lestrade, Donovan and Dyer were waiting to be given the all-clear to leave without further medical attention. Someone had come up with dry clothing for them; Dyer was wearing a grey jumper that hung off his thin shoulders, and Donovan's shirt and jacket both clearly belonged to a man. Even soaking wet and wearing a random collection of clothing pulled from the back of one of the police vehicles attending, Greg Lestrade was, as ever, the picture of masculine dignity.

"Well," Sherlock said as he made his way over. "If nothing else comes of this case, the order in which you jumped off that wall was illuminating."

"Yeah, thanks for that, guys," Donovan said through chattering teeth. "I really enjoyed that, and all for someone like Derrick Rice. Still. Better a conviction, or at least a trial, than another body."

"Yes." Sherlock put his hands in his pockets, glancing down at his shoes a second. "Quite right. Between Lestrade's first aid and the near-freezing water, Derrick Rice didn't even lose enough blood to pass out, let alone kill him. The court case is sure to be riveting."

"Great," Lestrade said. "And what about Sadie and Maisie?"

"John says…" Sherlock trailed off, looking around. He'd been about to say 'John says they're both too early to call', since that was the last thing he'd heard John say in the confusion of transferring Sadie and Maisie into the hands of the paramedics. But that had been a good fifteen minutes before, and he hadn't seen John since.

Lestrade gestured behind him, and Sherlock turned. In the darkness, he was just able to make out John a good fifty metres further north of the marina, sitting on the low curved wall that separated the road and the beach. Sherlock's first assumption was that he had wandered away to make a phone call, but there was nothing in his hands.

He looked back over his shoulder at Lestrade, who was just then accepting a bright-green mug of something hot from one of the paramedics.

Putting his freezing hands in his coat pockets, he strolled along the wall toward John, who looked up as he approached but neither spoke nor got up. It seemed wrong to sit down beside him, somehow, so he remained standing, looking out to sea, listening to the rhythmic crash of the ocean against the sea wall beyond them.

"Are you all right?" he finally asked, unable to think of any other meaningful remark.

"Yeah." John rubbed his forehead with two fingers. "Yeah, just needed a couple of minutes to recharge, you know, clear my head. CPR's tiring."

"Is Molly coming?"

John shook his head. "I told her to wait up at headquarters. No point in her coming down here—you, me, Greg… we're all fine."

"Yes." Sherlock cleared his throat. "Yes, I suppose we are."

John glanced back at Lestrade, who had wandered away from the ambulance and was deep in conversation with McMannis, a forgotten blanket still draped over his shoulders. "They should give Greg a medal for this, you know," he said. "I'd have left Derrick to drown."

"You didn't see me jumping in after him," Sherlock pointed out.

"Life sentence, like Adrian said. They're not going to put Adrian in prison now, are they?"

Sherlock shook his head. "He's served his time for that," he said. "And I doubt Ethan will want to retry him, anyhow."

John made a low, bitter scoffing noise that warned Sherlock to go no further on the subject of Ethan Frost. He looked back over his shoulder, watching Dyer get up and make his way over to where Lestrade and McMannis were still talking. Donovan pulled her legs up to her body and curled up on her side, regardless of the cold stone slab she was lying against. A paramedic in a high-visibility jacket made a beeline for her and gave her a gentle shake, and she scowled and sat up again.

"God," John said, having just noticed the same thing. "Donovan looks like a half-drowned cat. I should go over and see if she's okay-"

"The paramedics are doing that," Sherlock pointed out. "You're off-duty."

"Doctors are never off-duty, Sherlock. You've known me how many years now?"

"I think you've acquitted yourself and your profession tonight. You just saved Sadie's life."

"Yeah, well. Maybe." John winced. "I kept her on standby until the ambulance arrived. No guarantees. If it comes to it, you saved Maisie's life. Anyway, I'm not the one who figured out where they were."

At this, Sherlock clenched his jaw, shoving both hands in his pockets. "I should have known," he muttered.

"You did know."

"I should have known _days ago."_

"Like you always say yourself," John said, standing up. "All puzzles are simple when you already know the solution. Come on. I need coffee. From the looks of her, I daresay your mistress could do with some, too."

"Oh, shut _up,"_ Sherlock snapped, but John was too busy laughing to take any notice.


	19. End

John sighed as he closed his locker door and turned the key. Another twelve-hour shift, done and dusted. He'd been up since three and working in the A&E since five, and a decent meal was calling his name, but there was something else he had to do at the hospital before he went home.

He took the lifts to the ward upstairs, where Siobhan Frost was still being treated after her suicide attempt. He found her on rather than in her hospital bed. She was wearing her ordinary clothes, a green knit dress over a white blouse, and her hair was clean and combed. She smiled when she saw John in the doorway.

"Dr. Watson-" She struggled to her feet, leaning heavily on her husband's arm. "Sorry," she said ruefully. "Bit… wobbly still."

"Doing much better than when I last saw you," John said, giving her a weak smile. "You look like you're about ready to go home."

"Tomorrow, the doctor thinks," Adrian said, looking relaxed for the first time since John had met him. "Have you heard anything about…"

Somehow, John Watson had become the liaison between the Frosts and Sadie Holland, even though he hadn't seen Sadie or Maisie in person in the week since they'd been rescued. Both had developed pneumonia, and were still recovering in the hospital in St Ives, Sadie more rapidly than her small daughter.

"Not since this morning," John said. "Sadie's still a bit out of it, having her medication adjusted all over the place, but her lungs are clearing up."

"Maisie?"

"They think she'll likely get worse before she gets better," he admitted. "But that's pretty common with childhood pneumonia. The good thing is, I doubt she'll remember any of this when she's older."

So far as the police could piece together from Sherlock's deductions and the little they'd been able to get out of Sadie, Sherlock had picked both the means and the motive of Brett Holland's death. Derrick had been helping Sadie and Maisie from the _Marie Celeste_ onto his own boat as part of their plans to scuttle the yacht for insurance when Brett, who had been increasingly vigilant of Derrick's interactions with his wife for some time, had taken issue with the way the latter's hand had come to rest on Sadie's back as he helped her across. A fight had broken out. Derrick had struck Brett with an oar. Sadie had gone into screaming hysterics, and Derrick, to stop her, had hit her. Then he had gagged and tied her and her daughter up in the hull while he worked up above them to conceal evidence of his crime. It was the last Sadie had ever seen of her husband, but held captive in the hull for the next few days in waning consciousness, she had guessed much of the rest. A large part of both her recovery process and Siobhan's would be dealing with what had happened. Maisie had been spared this, but she would now, as Molly had reminded John sadly, grow up with no memory at all of the man she knew as Daddy.

Judging from Siobhan's pensive expression, she had also just considered this. She eased her grip on Adrian's arm and sank down to sit on the bed again, hands folded into her lap. John wondered if she was still in contact with her parents, but decided not to ask.

"Anyway," he said, embarrassed at being witness to all this. "If you're still here I'll come up and see you this time tomorrow, okay? If not, I'll be in touch."

"Thank you," Siobhan said listlessly, though she sought out John's gaze until he gave it to her. "For all your help. And will you please thank Sherlock Holmes for us?"

John paused on his way out to nod his agreement.

* * *

Thanks to London's public transport system, it often took John an hour to get home from work. It was close to six o'clock, and a cold rain was lashing up Baker Street in gusts, when he finally reached the doorway of 221 that evening. The lights were on in the foyer and in the flat upstairs, but on trying the handle, he found the street door locked.

Well, he couldn't complain about that one. Safety first. He dipped into his jacket pocket for his keys, then stopped as he heard a shrill little voice from within:

"Fish, Mummy! FISH!"

He paused, key still suspended in the lock. This did not sound like Charlie's usual performance when anything resembling a fish appeared on the telly. This sounded like…

_Oh, God. No. Don't you dare…_

He opened the street door in record time, barely pausing to shut the door and collect the pile of mail on the foyer carpet before going through to 221A. There was nobody in the kitchen, so he followed the sound of Charlie's voice until he reached the living room.

It was exactly as he'd feared. Molly sat in the floral-print armchair, both arms occupied in restraining Charlie from the little octagonal fish tank on the coffee table. In it was a host of seaweed, an oxygen pump in the guise of a deep-sea diver, a large number of pink and blue pebbles, and three shimmering goldfish.

After a second's mistrust, John knew this wasn't Molly's doing. Ever ready to indulge Charlie's whims, she still had the common sense to not want any more pets to look after. No, someone else was responsible for this. Someone else who was standing in the corner, coat on, scarf off, looking incredibly pleased with himself.

"Oh," Molly laughed, brushing her hair out of her face with one hand and gently prying Charlie's sticky fingers off the fish tank glass with the other. "John, hello, I promise this is _not_ what it looks like…"

"Daddy!" Charlie squealed, breaking away from Molly and pulling John by the leg of his jeans toward the fish tank, waving wildly with one chubby fist. "Look, Daddy!"

"Yes, I see," John said, offering a very forced smile.

"Fish!"

"Yes, they're definitely fish, aren't they? Real… live… fish." John gave the new members of his family a cursory look, then gave Sherlock Holmes a much longer one. He gestured for Sherlock to follow him into the kitchen and closed the connecting door to the living room.

"You traitor," he muttered. "You _knew_ I didn't want-"

"John," Sherlock said, "I've already consulted several sources on this. Apparently, it's my job as honorary uncle to provide Charlie with all manner of things, and it's your job as a responsible father to say no to them. It's hardly my fault that I'm better at my job than you are at yours."

"This is Harry's doing, isn't it?"

"I never reveal my sources."

"I'm going to kill her. You're responsible for those fish now," John said. "And I'm serious about that, Sherlock. You can feed them, and you can clean out their tank. And if they die, you can explain to my heartbroken toddler what happened to them."

"Oh, come on," Sherlock said. "She's far too young to understand abstract concepts like death. And too young to notice if I just keep replacing her fish. She won't even know which one is hers." He paused.

"Which one…? Oh, God, Sherlock, you did not. You did not buy goldfish for twins that aren't even born yet-"

"Besides," Sherlock continued, "if a severed human arm didn't bother her, I can't see how she'd be put out by a dead goldfish."

"Yeah, speaking of," John said, eager to veer the subject from Sherlock's excellent point. "Greg called when I was on the way home. Derrick Rice has a committal hearing set for early next year. I'll be interested to see if they go for manslaughter or murder."

"What about Beryl and Chris?"

"No charges laid." John sounded disappointed. "They didn't leave a paper trail of their demands, so it's all hearsay right now. Oh, guess, though."

"You know I don't guess."

"Fine. Deduce, then, what they just found out about Chris and Beryl."

"They have money."

"They're not broke, anyway. Ex teachers – they're both in a Defined Benefit scheme. There was no financial need for them to chase Brett and Sadie for the money, or live with Adrian and Siobhan. God, I'd love to throttle Beryl Holland."

"I'm told there's a queue for that," Sherlock commented. "How is Maisie?'

"Doing okay, but she's got a struggle ahead of her." John fidgeted for a second. "Actually," he said in lower tones, as if he were making a sudden confession, "there's something else I've been meaning to ask you for a while. No time like the present. Um."

Sherlock raised one eyebrow, as well he might at the request. John Watson had always asked so little of him...

"When Molly goes into hospital," John was saying. "Could you look after Charlie for us?"'

Sherlock did not answer immediately. He looked at John blankly for a few moments, as if the question hadn't sunk in properly. "You…" He swallowed. "You want me to babysit Charlie? On my own?'

John nodded. "You won't break her."

"I might," Sherlock protested. He swiped one hand over his chin, thinking hard. "Can't Harry do it?" he finally asked.

"Probably, but Harry was the one who suggested _you_ do it," John said. "I'm sure she'll be over to lend a hand. You live here with us anyway, so this way will be a lot more convenient than leaving things to her, no matter what happens."

"No matter 'what happens'?"

John shrugged. "No telling at this stage," he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact and failing. "It might be a scheduled caesarean, or it might be a 4am rush to hospital. We're all going to be on high alert pretty much from, say, the middle of January."

"Yes."

"Which means you won't be able to take any cases from then. It's a big ask, Sherlock; I know it is. You might need to have Charlie for a couple of days, on and off. If you're not up to it, I won't mind-"

"Yes."

It was then that John realised Sherlock was _agreeing_ to the challenge, though he was doing so in much the same tone John imagined he'd agree to donate a kidney. He wondered how long it would take for the shock to wear off. Well, with a bit of luck, there was still a good seven or eight weeks to hammer out the details of Sherlock's first major babysitting job.

"Oh. And…" John fumbled in his jeans pocket and pulled out a crumpled envelope. "This was in the door when I got in," he said, holding it out in the empty space between them. "Postmarked from Germany."

Sherlock frowned and took it, staring at it as if he'd never seen an envelope before.

"Looks like she takes after Mycroft, writing actual letters to people. I'll leave you to open it in your own time," John said, noting his expression and glancing away. "Maybe don't throw it in the bin if you can help it. She might just want to apologise."

"Probably."

"Probably." As a way of filling the silence, John opened the fridge, pretending to be absorbed in the contents for a few seconds. Finally he made a sound of disgust and shut the door. "I'm ordering in," he announced, picking up a pile of fliers and menus from where they were tucked in next to the phone. "And you're naming the bloody goldfish."

Half an hour later, Chinese food arrived at 221 Baker Street; by that time, Charlotte Watson's three goldfish had been named Plato, Aristotle and Epictetus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N – Thanks, again, for supporting this fic, and particular love to everyone else who's stopped by to leave a review. 
> 
> Would anyone be interested in me wrapping this series up with two fics: first, the Lestrade/Melissa wedding (with a locked-room mystery to solve) and then, finally, Sherlock and friends solving the case of Jack the Ripper? I'm slightly hesitant to commit unless enough people really want it – the first fic is very AU, dealing as it does with an OC and an AU relationship, and will overlap with the broadcast of the extremely-different Season 4. Otherwise, I'm happy for this one to be the last gasp. xx


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